short bits
Posted on August 25, 2004
Filed Under Misc. | 2 Comments
# Eric is still unemployed, but hopefully won’t be for long. There are opportunities to be had, the stars just have to line up. Note: a really, really, really bad time to lose your job in the New York City metropolitan area is a few weeks before the Republican National Convention. Everyone is either on vacation or getting ready to start vacation and doesn’t want to talk about hiring right now. But his resume is *everywhere* and there has been some interest.
# I’m used to having a certain level of activity and noise in the house during the weekday daytime hours and this week Eric and the kids are home. A challenge to get done what I need to do. And here I thought my daughter was the one in the family who was stuck on her routines.
# Speak of routines, I got myself hooked on “The Amazing Race” this summer. Thanks, Tivo. I credit (or blame, as the case may be) Tivo because it doesn’t care that the New York stations move the show all over the place to accommodate baseball. It finds it, it records it. I realized that’s why I got into this season when I lost interest in previous years. I lost interest after missing an episode or two before, now I can watch a few episodes in a row, sans commercials and annoying Colin scenes, in half the time. A. That host guy is adorable! and B. I love Chip & Kim (the married parents) and I’m rooting for them to win. They are exactly the kind of people I would be friends with.
# I finally decided to join the crowd and get a GMail account. Someone on a mailing list offered up an invitation with no strings attached and I jumped at it. Now I see why people have been tripping over themselves for invites. I’m not changing my main email address to a gmail address, but for now I’ve transferred over all my mailing lists and newsletter subscriptions. It’s nice to have an inbox that’s just an inbox of work-related and personal mail. Reading threaded conversations (such as those you’d see in a mailing list) is a pleasure in the GMail interface, and I never thought I’d like reading web-based email. I hate the webmail offered by my hosting account, for example, and I only use it when I absolutely have to. GMail is much better than that.
# After waiting about 4 weeks, we were notified today that our phone number officially switches over to “Vonage”:http://www.vonage.com tomorrow. Saving about $60 a month on our phone bill couldn’t have come at a better time. I can tell that the sound quality isn’t quite as good as it was with the POTS (plain old telephone service) line, but for $30 a month for unlimited local and long distance I’ll deal with my calls all sounding like they’re coming from a cell phone.
Weight Watchers new program
Posted on August 22, 2004
Filed Under Life | 26 Comments
It’s August 22nd and I can officially talk about it without worrying about losing my job!
“Weight Watchers”:http://www.weightwatchers.com new program, named “Turnaround™” was introduced today. If you follow these things, you may read that Weight Watchers is caving into the carb-free craze. That was my first reaction too when they told us about it last Spring. To be honest, I didn’t even try the new food plan until mid-June. I’ve been following it ever since and I have to be honest…in the 3.5 years since I reached goal weight this is the easiest it has ever been to maintain the loss.
In short, Weight Watchers now has two food plans to choose from. They have found that there are two types of dieters…the “counters” and the “cutters.” Weight Watchers has always been for the counters. You wrote down every bite you put in your mouth and when you were out of whatever allotment you were given of whatever food (or points) then you couldn’t eat any more. Weight Watchers used to have a limited food list but over the past few years, no food was taboo as long as it was measured and counted. That worked for a lot of people (myself included) but there are some that just can’t work in the tracking portion of the plan into their lives.
Then came the carb craze. Despite what you may hear or think, Weight Watchers is *not* getting on with the fad. But at its essence, there are parts of the Atkins and South Beach diets that Weight Watchers believes makes sense. The foods advocated by both programs are good, wholesome foods lacking added sugar and processed ingredients. Atkins didn’t think of low-carb donuts and ice cream when he wrote the book, I’m sure.
The new WW program gives you a choice of two food plans. One is the old Flex plan where you have a certain allotment of points to eat per day and you can eat any food or combination of food to get to that total. The new plan, for the “cutters”, is called the “Core Plan.” You can eat from a limited food list of wholesome, basic, low-fat foods but there is no stated limited on quantity. That doesn’t mean that you can sit down and have 30 fat-free yogurts at a sitting. Food still has calories and calories still make you gain weight. Period. But I didn’t get fat eating 10 oz. of plain fish for dinner instead of 6 oz. I didn’t get fat eating an extra apple for snack. The key isn’t that you can eat as much as you want, you can eat as much as you need to feel satisfied. Take a smaller portion to start, and when you’re done with it and if you’re still genuinely hungry, take a little more. Aim to feel satisfied, but not stuffed. If you want something that’s not on the core list, or contains even a single ingredient not on the core list, then you have to count its points towards your weekly allotment of 35 points. I like having 2 or 3 points worth of light ice cream after dinner so that’s a given for me. Bread is not on the core list, but you can have it if you count the points. Healthy carbs like fruit, whole-wheat pasta, brown rice, potatoes and couscous are on the core list (although some items are limited to once per day).
If you’re going on vacation or feel that there’s a week here or there that the core plan won’t work, then switch to the flex plan for that week. Or stick with the flex plan and try the core plan here and there. Whatever works best for your lifestyle along with some sort of activity.
Been quite a week
Posted on August 17, 2004
Filed Under Life | 4 Comments
I’ve been debating for the past few days whether or not to blog about the major changes that are happening here at chez Sohn. On the one hand, I do want to talk about what’s going but on the other hand, it’s still too raw to step back and write about. So I think I’m going to settle somewhere near an elbow and say this much…Eric lost his day job. I won’t get into the hows or whys, but suffice to say that we weren’t prepared. He put a lot into his little side business, and unfortunately it never got out of the red. Very red. So now the business is no longer, and Eric is actively seeking full time employment elsewhere. We’ll be okay for a few months while he looks, but we’re going to have to live a lot tighter than we ever have. Things that we took for granted even a week ago look so different now. It’s going to be a slow road back. Eric had that job for 15 years, so this is the first time in the entire time that we’ve been together that employment has been an issue.
If anyone knows anyone looking for a brilliant techie with extensive experience as a systems analyst specializing in funds transfer, drop me a note. Connecticut or New York preferred, of course.
A new website to talk about
Posted on August 10, 2004
Filed Under Design | 4 Comments
I have a lot of projects going on right now (explains why this blog has been quiet), but there’s one that’s just about ready to announce the world so I feel comfortable talking about it now.
Through my work with “SCOPES”:http://www.scopesnetwork.org I have met the leaders of other parent support groups in the county. The group in New Canaan is called “SPED*NET”:http://www.spednet.org and they are particularly active. Every year they have held a one-day conference on Inclusion. This conference is aimed at professionals (teachers, administrators, therapists, etc.) although they always try and have some parent-focused content. As parents, we keep yelling at the professionals not to segregate our children because they don’t have a clue how to educate them with typical peers, but we don’t give them the tools and training to do it right. This conference is a step in the right direction and is well-received around the state.
Last year I did their flyer and 8 page print brochure. Almost at the last minute, we talked about taking online registrations. We tied them into PayPal and put the form on the existing SPED*NET site. About 30% of the attendees ended up applying online. This year, I offered to build a website from the start. One that they could use from year to year and would hopefully contain pictures or other conference-related information.
“Here is what I came up with.”:http://www.spednetconference.org
We went black & white on the print side to save money, so I wanted a site that was bright and colorful and *accessible.* I keep accessibility in mind on all my websites, but on this one in particular I wanted to make sure it met the “State of CT Universal Web Site Accessibility Policy.”:http://www.cmac.state.ct.us/access/policies/accesspolicy40.html I believe that I have met that goal and the site meets Priority 1 and Priority 2 checklists (AA) of the W3C’s “Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).”:http://www.w3.org/WAI/ There’s probably more I could have done, but I’ve found that coding to web standards (valid XHTML/CSS) brings me halfway home.
Happy Birthday to Me
Posted on August 6, 2004
Filed Under Life | 5 Comments
Blah.
That’s how I feel today.
I’m not depressed about getting older. I’m blah that I don’t care. Like when did it happen that your birthday is just another day? I get to live birthdays through my daughters’ eyes and they start counting down 8 months in advance. Emily was sweet and sang me “Happy Birthday” at least 3 times today, ending with “…Are you 1? Are you 2? Are you 3?…” Took the whole car ride home from camp to get to the right number.
Blah.
