Starting a new sampler

I started my first cross stitch sampler recently, and I've realized that it's much hard to keep your place than on a regular design. I have just spent an evening unpicking a single stitch border. No fun. Apparently in the repeating pattern I missed a stitch, and so half the work I had done needed to be undone. Now I'm back at the place where I messed up, but I think I'll take a break and start something new.

In April I discovered The Gift of Stitching, an online magazine for cross stitchers and had to subscribe right away. One of the features of the magazine is publshing a sampler in parts, a 'mystery sampler'. Well, The 18th Century Band Sampler by Long Dog Samplers was their 4 part myster sampler. I dicovered it at Part 3, and decided to take this one on. Now I finally have all the items I ned to start, and I've stitched the edges of the fabric with my handy dandy new Stitch Pro tabletop sewing machine (bought it for $30 on Amazon).

It's amazing what people eat (or dont')

I was poking around on SparkPeople and was reading the message board for food substitutions. You know, I love chocolate, what can I eat instead that will trick me into thinking i am eating chocolate?

This person had posted on the board, I don't remember what about, but on each post it has at the bottom the person's weight loss progess tracker. It said she was at 106 pounds, her goal. WHAT? Is she crazy? I thought I'd use the convenient link to pop over to her Spark blog and see what she was like. Runner, motivated, and geez, eating about 700 calories a day. Umm, okay...I knew eventually I was going to run into the huge number of already skinny people that are trying to lose weight. I just can't deal with them. It sounds to me like this person is doing something really unhealthy. Maybe, aybe not. But since I am one of those severely overweight people, curvy, ruben-esque, whatever yhou want to call it, I've never been veyr toleant of anyone who's under 150 or so and trying to lose weight. It's my problem, and I'm fine with it. I just can't look to those people for motivation, that's all.
But I can look at her food diary and try out what she had for lunch. It looks good. In fact, her breakfast looks good too. Now, if she had only kept on eating normally...

Food Tracked

Breakfast	CALORIES	CARBS	FAT	PROTEIN
Banana, fresh, 1 extra small (less than 6" long)	75	19	0	1
Multi-Grain Cheerios Cereal, 0.5 cup	54	12	1	1
milk, 1/2%, 8 oz	90	12	1	8
Strawberries, fresh, 1.5 cup, halves	68	16	1	1
Kashi Go Lean High protein & High fiber Cereal, 0.5 cup	70	15	1	7
Egg white, cooked, no added fat-1 Large, 3 serving	51	1	0	11
Lunch
La Tortilla Factory, Whole Wheat Low Carb Tortilla, 1 serving	50	11	2	5
*Hillshire Farms Deli Select Brown Sugar Baked Ham, 2 oz	60	2	2	10
Miracle Whip, light, 1 tbsp	20	2	2	0
Kraft 2% Deli-Deluxe Swiss Cheese Slices, 1 serving	70	0	5	6
Baby Carrots-14 pieces, 1 serving	35	9	0	1
Frigo Light String Cheese, 1 oz	60	0	3	9
Cucumber (peeled), 1 medium	24	4	0	1
Dinner
None
Snack
None
Daily Totals:	727	103	16	61

identify my orchid

I was just given an orchid by Omar, the concierge, in the building where I work. Omar said someone gave him one last week and he brought it home and it died within two days. The same person gave him another one this week, but he didn't want it, so he gave it to me. Hurrah! I wanted to buy an orchid in October, but my mom and I went to the plant store and discovered that orchids are pricey. I've never spent more than $12 on a plant, and shelling out $40 for a plant that I don't know how to take care of seems like a gamble. When Omar offered the plant to me I thinking my eyes bugged out. I hope he really did want to give it to me and that I didn't somehow beg him for it. If he didn't want to give it to me he wouldn't have offered, right? I sort of have a problem with this kind of thing, so I've been working on it by saying yes and focusing on their generosity and not my own guilt.

So, I have no idea what kind of orchid this is. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's a phalenopsis, but beyond that... It has 4 small, rounded flowers that are a pale yellow green. The middle has some pink spotting. I will try to bring my camera to work tomorrow so I can snap a photo to post here.

Nix that Negative Thinking

I joined this free website, SparkPeople about a week ago to help me stay on track with my weight loss and healthy life efforts. I've been using the Nutrition Tracker to log my food each day, and I signed up for the weekly motivational email. This quote and blurb came from yesterday's email.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finding fault with everything you see
We all know people who just like to complain. It seems that no matter how good they have it, they're always spreading negative energy. Even the best, most painstaking listener can have trouble with someone who finds fault with everything around them. You can shine even in the worst situations if your character is strong. If you're starting to see the "dark side" too often and find yourself blaming your circumstances on other people, take another look. If you think a change of scenery will solve all your problems, think again. Change can be good. Moving on to new things can be an exciting chance to stretch yourself and break a rut. But it's important to start with yourself when you're finding things to improve. No matter where you live, work or play, the only constant is you. You can't escape yourself. Change on the outside will have no effect on your happiness or fulfillment unless you change on the inside too.

Boy does this quote speak to me! I find myself getting negative sometimes and realize that my comments are an indicator of something going on with me, and probably have nothing to do with my friend buying a pair of cool jeans and spending money. It's more like, "man, I want those jeans, wish I could buy them, wish I was thin, wish I was rich".

The last part of the quote says "Change on the outside will have no effect on your happiness or fulfillment unless you change on the inside too." I have spent a few years now working on my 'inside' but I still feel the same way about my outside. Now I'm trying to work on the outside at the same time, and hopefully I'll meet myself somewhere in the middle.

intrinsic memory

On my walk to work in the morning I pass by many brick buildings. At one particular moment I pass by a large brick building with a covered walkway, and I catch the strong scent of brick. I'm immediately reminded of standing outside the entrance to the church at my elementary school, the strong smell of brick and the feeling of reverence, and a little fear perhaps. The enveloping silence. In the city where I grew up there weren't many brick structures. My elementary school and the church on the same grounds must have been my first experience with brick. I think this is what we call intrinsic memory, that immediate association of a smell to a memory. The smell is a little damp, dusty, but has this pungent quality. Whenever I smell it now I think I must be in a holy place.

The church we went to as a family was stone, our house was wood, and all of our walkways, sidewalks, and garden paths were slate. In later years I had many more experiences with brick. One summer the city dug up our street, down through layers of asphalt, down to the original brick. My sisters and I spent the summer harvesting bricks from the street for our father's grand backyard schemes. These bricks were twice the size of normal bricks, and we had wide stacks four feet high when the summer was over.

CD Stomping

Last night I picked up a CD label making kit called Avery CD-Stomper CD Applicator with Software and Labels. I was about to post a photo of the kit here, but something seems to be wonky with the image loader. I've been wanting to make pretty labels for my burend cds for ages. It seems like a silly waste of money, but it would look so nice! And every so often I make a cd for someone of music, or images from a trip, and it would be nice to not have to scribble on the front of the cd with a Sharpie.

Salad for Lunch? Me?

I just had a great salad for lunch. It's from Au Bon Pain and has Salad Greens, Eggs, Tomatoes, Turkey Breast, Gorgonzola Cheese, Bacon, Carrots, Croutons, yum! With a little Light Ranch dressing, double yum.
I'm not really a salad person, but I'm trying to eat healthier. One might say a salad with bacon on it is not healthy, but I'd say as a whole the salad was a good choice.

Yesterday I signed up at SparkPeople.com. It's a community website where you can keep a log of your diet and exercise, get movtiation, read articles, etc. I'm just trying it out right now to learn how the tools work and if they would be beneficial to me.

To Do List

Can't stop thinking about all the things I'm going to do this weekend. I might as well write them down in a list so I can get teh satisfaction of crossing them off right?

-sew edges of fabric for 18thC Mystery Sampler
-treat cork on birkenstocks
-laundry
-watch music videos online
-burn cds from downloaded music - have a whole ton of albums that I've bought/copied that i'm not listening to because they exist only in my computer.