Posts filed under ‘Minor Stuff’
Stray Puppy Adventure
Yesterday, after days of waiting, I finally picked up my bike from the bike shop. When I took it home, the gears felt funny, like the chain was rubbing when I was in the lower gears of the cassette. I left it in the backyard and went inside to ask my dad if he wanted to take a look at it. Upon opening the back door, he tells me, all nonchalant, “There’s a dog in our backyard.”
Sure enough, there is a dog with no collar in our backyard. He looks like a yellow lab, about 70 pounds, neutered and well taken care of, missing collar and running loose aside. He seems to have had a bath and haircut recently, though he needed a good brushing since he was shedding like mad. He was a little mouthy but didn’t bite, which seemed to indicate that he could be teething. All in all, because of his already large size, I thought he was about a year and a half, but my dad guessed he was 10 months old because of how big his paws and head were in comparison to the rest of his body.
Apparently, he was attracted to us by the little scraps of stale bread my parents put out for the squirrels, since he was eating that rather quickly. I ran inside and grabbed a full piece of bread to give to him. He was happy to take it and friendly but panting like crazy, because it’s 90 degrees and rather humid outside.
So I ran inside again, this time for a big bowl of water, and brought it to puppy. Puppy drank and was happy. Then I realized that we should call somebody to come get him. I called the non emergency police line, and they put me through to 911 dispatch, who asked “Do you have a fence to keep him inside until we get there?” “No, but my neighbor does. I’ll see if we can use it.”
So I went back outside and lured puppy into my neighbor Melinda’s yard using exciting “Let’s play” sorts of words, and shut the gate. My dad called her so she’d know we were using her yard and wouldn’t let her dog out for the time being.
However, puppy had other plans. He got restless and started sizing up the fence.
...and this is him about five seconds before he jumped the fence.
Puppy immediately ran across the street to play with kids who were bouncing a basketball. The kids got boring, so he ran to a neighbor who was walking by. The neighbor subsequently complained about how this dog “gets out all the time.” Still, no one knew to whom the dog belonged. The neighbor got boring, and puppy ran to another group of people walking by.
At this point, my new neighbor Christina came out. She has 3 dogs and thus plenty of dog treats. The puppy liked the treats; he even sat for one.
It’s still hotter than all get out, so I decided to run back to neighbor’s fenced in yard to get the water for him. The puppy liked this game of chase, so he followed me. Upon returning, I realized that Melinda had let her dog Odie out into her yard.
Puppy and Odie spot each other immediately and are super curious, cautious and tense. I was tremendously worried that the dogs would fight. Since puppy was young, strong, smart and exuberant and Odie is a mature golden retriever, it would be a difficult scenario.
Luckily, Odie and puppy seemed to be doing alright. Melinda, Christina, my dad and I discussed how puppy made a mockery of her fence. Melinda was flabbergasted at the thought and could hardly believe it… at which point, of course, puppy jumps fence again, but this time to play with Odie. They played vigorously for probably five minutes before the police finally showed up, what felt like a half hour after I called. The cop was able to easily put a slip leash on puppy and take him away. Odie, meanwhile, sat at the fence gate and barked. Then laid down and barked. Then looked sad and barked. He missed his new friend.
Had puppy been a bit older and a bit less smart, I’d have asked the cop to let me know if the owners were never found. The truth is, though, with a dog who needs that much attention, I could not handle it. I haven’t owned a dog before, and if he can jump fences so easily, he’s much more than I can handle. Puppy seemed like the kind of dog you’d have to take running with you every day to prevent him from developing some truly bad habits.
One of these days, though, I’ll have a dog. I hope.
July 28, 2011
And We’re Back
After a hiccup with the transfer of my kabby.net domain to DreamHost from Webhost Giant, the blog is back up. The transfer happened over Memorial Day weekend, so, as you can see, the blog wasn’t my #1 priority in the transfer. Instead, the main objective was to move the Months Behind site to its own domain. It has been at kabby.net/mb for a long time now, but that group is really deserving of their own home. After it had been live for less than a week, it already grabbed the #1 search result on Google for the phrase Months Behind. I have to say, I’m quite proud of the community.
You may ask, “Why are you still hosting that? Didn’t you quit WoW years ago?” Yes, I did. You can quit playing games, but that doesn’t mean you quit the people involved. The Months Behind community has been around even longer than the site/forums I created for them, and I know we will continue to be around even after WoW is a fading memory. So, to keep in contact with them, I and the many others who have since quit playing WoW, need this communication avenue which doesn’t require an active WoW account.
I intended for this to be a much shorter post, but apparently I suck at being succinct. I will update later with all the stuff I’m up to. There are many things to mention, and it seems like the list just keeps on growing.
July 11, 2011
Why I’ve Been Successful
“How did you do it?”
I get this question a lot now that I’ve lost thirty-five pounds. The answer is simple, but no one wants to hear it: self-control. You can put it in any form of words you like, but what it boils down to is willpower. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, but it was an essential and necessary component in everything I’ve done to improve my health so far.
Allure magazine Dec 2009 cover
The amazing thing is I had no idea that developing my willpower was the key behind losing weight (rather than subject knowledge, which tools you use or any other contributing factor) until recently. As in, until this morning when I read this jaw-dropping article in Allure called “Mission: Control” by Judith Newman. I would love to link to the article, but it appears to not be available online. Instead, I must encourage you to run out and buy the December 2009 issue, open up to page 189, ignore the half naked model wearing pleather on leg press machine, and start reading.
You’re probably saying, “Karen, since when do you subscribe to a magazine devoted to makeup? You don’t even wear makeup.” Well, that’s true. The fact of the matter is, I didn’t exactly pay for a subscription to the magazine. With the paper-based news and magazine industries hit so hard recently, I’ve gotten free subscriptions to Wired and Allure through other purchases I’ve made. In the case of Allure, I could have instead gotten Glamour, which I used to read years ago. I decided to go with Allure over that since I’m less familiar with the content and likely to learn more from it. That’s one of the better decisions I’ve made, based on what I’ve learned from the magazine so far.
The article I’m referring to cites multiple psychological studies, most of which are over ten years old (I must be out of the loop), that help explain how strong self-control is developed, maintained, and most importantly, how it wears out.
To quote the article:
What most of us don’t grasp about willpower is that it is a limited resource, according to research by Roy F. Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Florida State University. This is particularly true when it comes to losing weight. You may have every intention of eating less, but if you are exercising self-control in one arena of your life, it may be hard to get it together in another.
In a 1998 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, hungry subjects were presented with plates of radishes and chocolate chip cookies. (The latter were actually baked in the lab, so that the air in the room was fragrant with cookie goodness.) Some subjects were allowed to eat the cookies, and others were told to eat only the radishes. Later, they were given puzzles to solve–and the radish eaters gave up more quickly on a puzzle than subjects who had not had to exert self-control by avoiding the cookies. In other words, the radish eaters who had to say no to the siren song of cookies could not exert the discipline needed to plug away at a boring, frustrating task.
Thus, self-control is a resource your body uses, similar to energy. Certain actions/foods will build up willpower, while others drain it. The article goes on to explain that exerting self-control obviously drains your self-control resource, in addition to other actions like decision-making, thought control, emotion control, impulse control, and task performance.
The good news is you can build self-control up, similar to strengthening a muscle. This is something I have been doing unconsciously for the past year. I started to get a handle on what things I wanted to change about my life, I started enacting them slowly. The first things I changed were small, like “I want better posture,” “I want to speak more clearly,” or “I don’t want to speed as much while driving.” The article considers these to be mental workouts that help increase your willpower. Since willpower is a limited resource, though, you shouldn’t try to change too much at once, especially if the things you’re changing are big.
Then, as if the article already knew it had me hooked and wanted to make sure I’d blog about it, it went on to slightly bash artificial sweeteners.
Using up your self-control resource also lowers your blood glucose levels. To replenish your pool of self-control, sugar does a good job at being a quick fix. Artificial sweeteners, on the other hand, were shown to not have this effect. In the long run, though, the protein-rich snacks will be better for you and have a similar replenishing effect; it just doesn’t act as quickly as sugar does. Additionally, liquor will lower your blood glucose levels, which may be part of the reason why our willpower goes out the window when we drink. Sleep also replenishes the self-control resource, and lack of sleep puts your willpower in a bad place.
Oddly enough, the article then goes on to talk about other ways to motivate oneself. It recommends the threat of losing money, as opposed to the reward of gaining even the same amount of money, as “Tons of economic studies have shown that people work harder to avoid monetary losses than they do to gain a similar amount.”
Back on topic, though, the article mentions another self-control method that I’ve been using myself, without thinking about it. The author calls them “if-then plans.” You think about a situation beforehand, and make specific plans in the event of a situation that would otherwise throw you off. For example, “If I’m tired when my alarm goes off, then I’ll get up anyway.” You’d be surprised at how well this works, if you take a little time to focus on that. The article claims that these plans remove the decision-making that would normally take place at that time, which prevents that decision from using up your self-control resource.
So, to sum up, here is a list of things that REPLENISH your self-control resource:
- Sugar (for a burst)
- Protein (slower, but lasts longer)
- Sleep
These are the things that DRAIN your self-control resource:
- Using self-control of any kind (thought, emotional, impulse, etc.)
- Decision-making
- Task performance
- Alcohol
So, keep that in mind if you have an indulgence situation coming … like Thanksgiving. Give yourself every advantage you can. Plan ahead so there won’t be any decisions to be made. Get a lot of sleep. Do tasks ahead of time if possible. And, if all else fails, have a little bit of some real sugar.
On a side note, the article goes on to say that a 2007 study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that exerting self-control in one area of your life increases the amount you’ll spend shopping. That probably explains why my checking account hit an all time low. Well, that and Jamaica. 
November 21, 2009
Woo It’s Working
Exciting! Now it’s time to stop playing around and get some exercise done. Speaking of which, I’m tired of hearing people tell me I’m too skinny to still be losing weight. I’ve got ten pounds left to a 20.4 BMI – which is the middle of normal (18.5-24.9). Plus I’m not ecstatic about my jeans size.
So, quit bugging me about it. I’m not a moron or an anorexic. I’m healthy for once and dammit I’m gonna stay that way.
Sorry for the rant but it really irks me.
October 17, 2009
Lunch
Importing from blogger is proving much more problematic than expected, because the default import finds no posts. Sigh.
October 17, 2009
New WordPress-based Blog
Wordpress
I’ve moved over to a blog powered by WordPress, formerly powered by Blogger, for a couple of reasons. One, I’d love to be able to reliably update this site using my iPhone. Blogger cannot handle this for whatever reason. I was even unable to get Blogger to cooperate with emailed blog posts. Two, it’s a much stronger platform with greater customization capability. Three, it gave me something fun to do for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning.
So, thank you to Blogger for your posting capabilities in the past, but I’ve moved on. We’ll see how this goes from here on out. Hopefully, this will be even better than the old blog.
October 17, 2009
Test
This is a test blog post. This is only a test.
However, you may be interested to hear that this is a test from my new
iPhone!
September 20, 2009
This is a Dark Game
You’ll probably laugh at me, but The Sims 3 made me cry last night. I’m sure it had something to do with my female hormone fluctuations, but regardless, it was rather upsetting to see my “sim me” age well before her time. She had made it to the end of her athletic career, but was four skill points short of her lifetime goal (Golden Tongue, Golden Fingers: 8/10 guitar and 8/10 charisma). Granted, she can change her lifetime wish and quite possibly fulfill it, but it seems too depressing. Who wants to watch a rock star granny?
I took a video of her getting engaged (although she didn’t get married or have kids) and of her final “birthday.” Since she wasn’t looking forward to aging, I opted to not throw her a party. Instead, she was playing guitar in the park for tips when she went from pretty to muumuu.
It made me reflect on my life and wonder how many things I want to do but will ultimately never accomplish. I’m going to be 27 soon, and at the rate I’m going, I don’t see my life as anything special. There are things in my life that I enjoy that I have put on hold. For one, I’d really love to be in a band again, but I feel like I don’t have time. I’ve always wanted to have an MBA, but I don’t like the expensive and difficult process of going back to school. I thought I’d be married by now, since a lot of my friends are married and/or pregnant, but I don’t feel ready for that. How old will I be before I have kids, if I even get to have kids? I feel like my time is slipping by and I’m not doing enough with it.
While that all is depressing, I do have to give myself credit for one thing. Despite feeling like there was no hope, I did weigh in only 1 pound higher than my initial goal weight this morning. Since December, I’ve lost over 20 pounds. The changes I’ve made in my life feel more permanent than anything else. I enjoy working out (to a certain extent, at least) with my workout videos and rollerblading. I get a sense of accomplishment from tracking my calories, and I don’t feel like I have to eat as much as I once did. It hasn’t been an easy road by any means, but I did set out for it and do it. I don’t have any plans to discontinue my current activities or habits, so who knows. Maybe I’ll get into even better shape than I was in high school.
On the more good news front, I may finally be able to pick up my Eclipse today after work. The mechanic has had it for a full month now. Granted, he’s fixing a massive list of problems. Since I got cold feet on buying a new Nissan Altima Coupe (I didn’t want to say goodbye to my current car), I got all of the problems I could think of fixed.
- Engine mounts
the initial reason for bringing it in - Water pump leak
caused by the engine mounts wearing down - Fuel door pop
would release but not pop the door open so I had to wedge something in the release and go around to pry open the door - Driver’s side windshield fluid sprayer
one of the two nozzles sprayed directly onto the hood - Air conditioning
compressor needed replacing - Power locks relay x2
power locks would not unlock the door but would turn on/off the alarm; the first time he replaced it, it failed within a few days; mechanic thinks because it was getting wet, so he’s moving it - Moonroof seal
my car would pee on me when it rained because the seal had been distorted - Driver’s side door handle
mechanic broke it off
Needless to say, it won’t be cheap, but with a little luck, my car will run almost like new for quite a while after this.
Feeling: So very, very old
Listening to: Aerosmith – Cryin’
June 18, 2009
Testing Out Windows Live
Windows Live
So I saw all the silly commercials for Windows Live, but I thought, “Why would I want to use some Microsoft program for that when I’ve already got Google (picasa, gmail, blogger, etc.)?” Well, the answer was clear: 25 GB of space per account.
Google’s Picasa software is very easy to use and intelligent. But 1 GB of space already has me wary about uploading any more photos. Despite not even using 1 GB (of a total of 7 GB) of my email space, it’s encouraging me to pay for more web space hosting. I’m not a fan of that.
The other thing I’m liking about Windows Live is it makes it very easy to switch between “linked” accounts. It’s pretty obvious that I have two Gmail accounts. One is for friends (real people) and one is for companies (not real people). Excellent spam filter or not, I still care about an email from any real person a lot more than an email telling me there’s a sale at some department store.
So, here I am trying out the blogging software, which claims it can upload to blogger. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it, but I’ll be sticking with the “Skydrive” (what they call your 25 GB) for photos so long as I can figure out a way to feed it into my photos page on kabby.net.
Shed
My family is in the final stages of getting a shed-well, a barn-put in our backyard. It’s a much more arduous process than it should be, thanks to permits and digging restrictions in addition to the normal foundation requirements. Yesterday, we spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon shoveling 5,000 pounds of limestone into a dirt square in the backyard and trying to level it. Yesterday evening and this morning, my back reminded me that I’m not a kid anymore.
Bunnies
To those of you who haven’t heard yet, Jonathan now has 2 lively young bunnies. Despite their naughty behavior, he has no plans to eat them. I visited and took way too many photos of them, which you can see in the album linked above. For what it’s worth, I’m impressed with the album linking feature in the Windows Live Writer.
Rollerblading
Yes, it’s true, I’ve tried to take up rollerblading again. I’ve gone with Renee a few times, and I had a lot of fun, despite having issues stopping. I decided my 15 year old skates needed a bit of a tune up, so I bought some new bearings. WOW, did that make a difference. They were like completely different skates. They actually felt a lot like my ice skates, which I’m comfortable with.
Best of all, changing the bearings made it a ton easier to stop, oddly enough. You’d think with new bearings, the skates would just be faster and harder to control, but that’s not the case. The skates are faster, sure, but they’re also not unpredictable like they used to be. The problem I had with braking the normal way was I couldn’t keep my balance very well. That was because braking means balancing on one foot, which is hard to do when the skate is rolling at an unpredictable pace (bad bearings cause your wheels to lock up). That was the best $40 (had to buy a $12 tool, too) I have spent in a long time.
Feeling: Sore
Listening To: Pink – Mean
June 7, 2009
So Much and Yet So Little
Driscoll Catholic, my high school, is closing at the end of this year. I’m shocked and very saddened, as if I could get any sadder at this point. The people, the building, the memories; all of it feels so much further away now. I remember the auditorium, where I felt so at home. The prop room backstage where I signed my name on the wall in marker, where so many others had signed before me, some of whom have already left this world. I remember the hallways, and how I felt like I knew every little corner of every room. I remember the ugly carpets and the putrid-smelling vacuum cleaners. I can’t imagine never being able to go back to see how it has changed.
I want to remember forever, but I know I won’t. I want to think that this doesn’t change anything, but I can’t escape the feeling that it will.
…And yet this is just one of the many things that is causing me grief lately. Combine that with the cutbacks at All Tile. Throw in some dashed hopes of having a dog. Mix well. Top with a general feeling of misdirection in life. This is not exactly the cake I was looking for.
Feeling: Depressed
Listening to: Kelly Clarkson – Irvine
2 comments April 2, 2009
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