I'm a geek and I know it

One of the things I love about working out and working on fitness and health in the 21st century is the abundance of technological help available. It's especially good for someone like me, who lives far from the madding crowd. Or the stinky gym locker room. Whatever.

LoseIt!'s summary for last week. Some days are better than
others, and I do have a tough time eating more than this.

I get weekly wrap-ups from LoseIt! and dailymile and it's encouraging to see those seven-day totals all in one nice, neat little graphic. It's discouraging to step on the scale and see an unexpected result, but after 12 weeks of recording every calorie in and out, I guess it's time to stop expecting anything like a normal response from my body.

As I study the LoseIt! graphic, I wonder if I'm doing it wrong. I don't think I am. The final column should be as close to zero as possible, right? I realize I'm far below that on most days, but on the days I come close I really feel as though I've eaten too much. At my age, I don't need the same number of calories a 40- or 30-year-old needs. I'm assuming LoseIt! factors age into its recommendations.

I tried out the BMR calculator at fat2fitradio.com using my height, current weight, goal weight and four different ages, and the suggested calorie target is lower for each decade.

62 years old, which is what I'll be on May 25. And don't you forget it! Heh.

The suggestion at the sedentary level is in the ballpark with LoseIt!'s recommendation. I would put myself in the Moderately Active level. I exercise six or seven days a week, but I wouldn't call it hard.

32-year-old female.

If I were 32, I could add another couple hundred calories per day and still lose weight, according to the calculator. I can guarantee I wasn't eating this much when I was 32. Thirty years ago we followed the guidelines in popular women's magazines that told us to eat 1200 calories a week, and offered menu plans with exciting lunches like "green salad topped with two ounces of tuna drained of oil." Okay, I'm making the lunch part up, but you get the idea.

At 42 (above, left) I would need to cut about a hundred calories a day, and at 52 (above, right) another hundred. (You can click on those tiny charts and they'll get bigger. I think.)

The chart I love getting every week is from dailymile:

And the lifetime wrap-up on the website is even better.

Just think if you'd started keeping these stats when you were running track in high school, and could look back and see how far around the world you've come when you hit your 60s. Ah, but no regrets for me. I'm just happy to be able to put one foot in front of the other on a daily basis. I'm not quite ready to sit down yet.

I'm not geeky enough to create my own spreadsheets in Excel, mostly because I think Excel is evil. I've been known to use spreadsheets in the past, however. The kind where you use graph paper and a pencil to record your progress. Because that's all we had, back in the day. You young whippersnappers probably don't know what graph paper is. Now take your ball and get off my lawn!

November 20 - work/play

I made a tab for the WVFDW Facebook page, which was both work (because
I didn't know what the hell I was doing) and play (because I love technology
and social networking and feeling productive without a deadline. Win/win!

Still playing electronic catch-up

I have finally gotten through all the e-mails which backed up following the electrical outage, and I've managed to keep up with them (and even unsubscribe from some 'meh' newsletters) since the grand purge.

What I haven't caught up on are blogs. There are 270 273 unread blog posts in my Google Reader. The alcoholic in me doesn't want to miss anything (and if you, too, are similarly afflicted, you might be able to relate), but the practical me thinks 'marking all as read' is the thing to do. I'm just not sure I can.

Work yesterday was great: It was hot and I worked hard for four hours, deeply watering every plant at the garden center. I then cleaned up the area where we toss unused pots and trays. There is some potting to do, but I didn't have time to start on the list. I'm working again tomorrow, and hope to get my hands dirty then. Good thing I found the nail brush. Even wearing gardening gloves, your nails are a mess when you repot plants.

(I'm letting my nails grow a wee bit, hoping before summer's end to give myself this manicure.)

Back to the electronic backlog … if I didn't have solitaire on my phone, I'd probably read those posts. A little searching and, lo and behold, there's a Google Reader mobile app. Since the phone is somewhat permanently attached to my person, I installed it and put the icon on the same "page" of my phone as the solitaire icon. Problem solved. (I hope. Film at eleven.)

The bigger problem is my husband's resentment of the somewhat permanent attachment phone. His mobile phone is the simplest unit available. He'd like it better if it didn't have a camera. Mine is a mini-computer in my back pocket, and I use it all the time. He's an absolute Luddite when it comes to electronics. He's never used the computer, and prefers to write longhand and use stamps and envelopes and paper, ohmy! He brings his phone to me when he sees a missed call or (rare) voice mail notification.

He's appreciative of the ability to look up news about current events, but he still uses the encyclopedia. He's often said if he were 10 years younger he'd be a total computer geek, but technology seems to have passed him by, and he doesn't mind a bit.

I just wish he could live and let live about this. I must remember to point out, next time he's being cranky about my electronic addiction, that I don't mind at all that he reads books made out of paper, printed with ink. Why should he mind that I read mine on a Nook? Heh.

Arghhh ...

I just read Anne's lovely comment on yesterday's post, in which she said I was in a good place in so many ways. She should know; Anne's been reading my drivel for years, and has been through many of my ups and downs both at the Shrinking Knitter and here.

Isn't she pretty? And she used to work!

I'm actually not in a good place rightnowthisminute, but it's a technical glitch between my laptop and a wireless mouse that USED TO WORK, before the most recent OS update. I've been trying to fix the problem for, oh, more than an hour now.

I don't need the mouse to do the work I have to do this morning, but working in Excel is easier when I can click-and-drag with a device rather than with my index finger.

Thus the "arghhh" and head-banging and other frustration noises you've been hearing from the Middle of Nowhere.

If you happen to have a MacBook Air and a Logitech M305 Bluetooth mouse that do work together, could you please share the magic words with me?

As both of you know, I love me some technology. But it's times like these that try women's souls.

Other things that try my soul:

• When my husband goes into one of his moody, broody places, especially when I don't know what's wrong.
• When Hershey won't come when she's called, especially when I need her to come in because I'm going somewhere. (I don't leave her outdoors when no one is home, not even for a little bit.)
• When the brew pause feature on the coffeemaker suddenly and inexplicably fails.
• When the oven won't heat up. (The heating element sometimes needs to be jiggled back in place. Jiggling has saved me lots o'cashmoneybucks in repair or replacement costs.)
• Fruit flies. I guess if you have indoor fruit trees, you stand a chance of having fruit flies, no matter what the temperature is outside. I killed half a dozen of them last night in a 10-minute span. I hope there's no such think as fruit-fly karma.

Looking at that list, there's absolutely nothing on it about poor health or financial distress. So, really, I should just delete the whole shebang. But writing it down typing it out actually helped me come to a place where I can share things that soothe my soul:

• Text messages or phone calls from any of my grandchildren.
• Seeing a picture of my dad. I sure miss him, but it comforts me to know he's no longer in pain.
• Home-cooked meals.
• The women I serve at the AA meeting at Alderson FPC.
• This.

Feel free to add to either of these lists! And have a tech problem-free, soul-soothing day, won't you?