April 29, 2008
Once my toe heals up (week or so) I am going to start bike commuting again to work.
My car gets better gas mileage than I thought. For a trip to Atlanta that involved 85% highway and 15% city driving, my car registered 35 miles per gallon. But I want to be conservative and estimate that my car gets 24 mpg in the city. My round trip commute to work is about 13 miles so at $3.50 a gallon, my cost for a one-day commute is $1.90. That isn't enough to motivate me to ride my bike to work, but since I enjoy it, I'll do it anyway.
Addendum - I think there is something wrong with the fact that my 1997 car gets better gas mileage than most newer cars. Computers have made huge strides in the past ten years. So have television sets. Hybrids are new since 1997, but continuously variable transmissions (CVTs) have been around since before my car was manufactured. I test drove a CVT version of my car in 1997. And diesel fuel is a sloppy solution. Diesel emissions stink (and make people sick, I don't care how German your car is) and diesel fuel is now selling at a premium to unleaded ($4.06 per gallon average this month). Anyhow, it just seems like in ten years car manufacturers could have figured out how to build a cheaper or same cost version with better gas mileage.
Posted by megabeth at 03:13 PM | Comments (4)
April 28, 2008One of the few snack foods I can eat is potato chips. Most other snack foods are processed. 95% of all crackers have sugar or corn syrup in them. Pretzels often have sweeteners, too. (Pretzels? WHY?!?!?) Anything with a flavored powder coating like Ranch, Vinegar and Salt, Parmesan, etc. usually has dextrose or maltodextrin in the ingredients list. This leaves me with plain potato chips. So I bought some kettle cooked Lay's and noticed that the chips are mostly salt with a small percentage (2 or 3 percent would be generous) of potatoes. When I ate the chips, I felt the need to do a keg stand on a bottled water dispenser.
Yesterday I found a bag of Lay's chips called "pinch of salt" that has 1/2 to 1/3 the amount of sodium per serving as regular chips. Opened the bag, and ate one. Deja vu! This is how chips tasted when I was a kid. I could actually taste the flavor of potatoes.
Why do food manufacturers do this to food? It should be illegal.
Usually when I want a snack, I make popcorn the old fashioned way - on the stove. Not surprisingly, it tastes like popcorn, not salt.
On the ice cream aisle, I read the ingredients list for low-fat and "no sugar added" ice creams. It was very disturbing. The ice creams that claim "no sugar added" are being truthful; however, they forgot to mention all the other sweeteners that we do not call 'sugar', such as maltitol, dextrose, maltodextrin, aspartame, and sucralose. Sugar alcohols like maltitol have been altered chemically so that they deliver the same level of sweetness as sugar but at half the calories. Also, if you read the warning label, you'll see that sugar alcohols cause indigestion in many people. The labels on these ice cream containers are very misleading. It should also be illegal.
Breyer's has an "All Natural" flavor that is 'creamier' than its other flavors. What makes it creamier? A comparision between vanilla "creamier All Natural" and vanilla "All Natural" reveals one difference: corn syrup in the creamier version. How is corn syrup "all natural"? I don't know. I'm also trying to figure out how a pig could be called a dog, or how blue could be called green. It is a mystery to me.
Your best bet, if you scream for ice cream: Anything with truly 'all natural' ingredients. Breyer's lists milk, cream, sugar and vanilla on their products. Ice cream made with table sugar is a lesser evil than ice cream made with ten different laboratory chemicals.
Posted by megabeth at 10:29 AM | Comments (1)
April 26, 2008I thought I would elaborate on my broken toe and how it happened. It is hard for me to admit I am stupid sometimes :-P but this lesson will hopefully influence other people who read this to practice safe lawn mowing habits.
When I was mowing the lawn on Sunday, it got stuck on the edge of the grass in some mud so I used my foot to push it out. Bad idea. Come to think of it, I have always used my foot to push the mower when needed. So what I've learned from this is to never use your foot to do anything with a mower. My foot slipped underneath the mower and it grazed the top of my foot. I was lucky because it only cut one toe, the fourth smallest one. The blade grazed the third toe and gave it a little scrape. The cut was about 1/2 deep into the toe. The damage was that it cut the skin (obviously), the tendon into two pieces, one artery, busted the joint capsule open, and decimated about 1/4 inch of the small toe bone at the end. Pulverized it into a powder, and left a small chipped piece which they did not retrieve because it would have required cutting. God makes our bodies with rendundant parts so your toes each have two arteries for blood supply. I had one uncut artery, which is the only reason why I still have a toe right now. The first thing we looked at after it happened is that the toe was turning blue or still pink, and fortunately it was pink (and purple).
Five days after this accident, I am no longer using crutches, which is also a testament to how quickly our bodies heal. It still has a ways to go, still sore, but I can hobble around as a bipedal animal again.
My father wants me to get a new mower (mine is very old) because the new ones have a safety feature when you let go of the handle, the blades stop turning. That would not have helped me in this situation because I was still holding onto the handle. Safety features on mowers are nice and can prevent accidents, but let's say a child runs out in the yard up to the mower and then slips and falls underneath it. The safety feature is not going to prevent that kind of accident. I know that I will never cut the grass again (or use a weed eater) without wearing steel toe boots. And probably will never use a chain saw again, though I'm one of those crazy people who find cutting things up with a chain saw to be a wonderful stress buster.
Accidents like this one happen in a flash. I deeply regret that it happened and am thankful it wasn't worse. But it served as a reminder that accidents can happen so quickly - if we knew they were coming, we would have avoided them.
The long term effects of this will be minimal - I may have some arthritis in that joint for the rest of my life. I should be back on the bike again in about a week to ten days.
One thing people keep asking me is how bad it hurt. When you experience a trauma, for a few minutes you can't feel it at all. Then the pain came and I got used to it. When we drove to the ER, the air circulating in the car was causing much pain because when you get a cut to the bone, air touching the bone is not a pleasant thing to feel. The next painful experience was when the doctor put shots in the toe to numb it up. Those were extremely brief. Then the nurse put a shot of antibiotics in my hip, and I thought my leg was burning and would fall off any minute. Truly the worst pain of the whole thing was that stupid shot. I refused any pain medications. I've felt far worse pain before than this. On a scale of 1 to 10, at times it was a 5 or 6 at the most. My pain tolerance is decent. That's why I can suffer on the bike. :)
Posted by megabeth at 12:28 PM | Comments (2)
April 23, 2008Lately I haven't had the time to post updates. Just too busy right now. I had a little accident with the lawnmower on Sunday and broke the toe next to the little pinky toe on my right foot. I'm very annoyed with life on crutches. I can drive but can't walk until the pain subsides some more. Should be able to go back to cycling in a few weeks. My sister's wedding is in three weeks so I may be back at the mall looking for a pair of flats to wear with the bridesmaid gown. The bright side is that I need some time to get some stuff done that I usually make excuses not to do. Like Roth IRA allocations and financial planning and updating financial software.
On Monday I tried to install a Netgear router and was on the phone with Dell and Netgear technical support for literally four hours. And another few hours fiddling with the set-up. After all that, we could not get my laptop to connect to the router. So basically an entire wasted day on nothing. I decided to give up on going wireless in my house. It is not worth six hours of my time to set up. That hurt far worse than breaking my toe. I hate computers.
Posted by megabeth at 11:57 AM | Comments (3)
April 18, 2008I received a category upgrade in cycling from a 4 to a 3 today. I wasn't in a big hurry to upgrade because the 3s race with the 4s in the majority of races, so it doesn't make much difference to be one or the other. However, with some races they split out the women into two groups 1/2/3 and 3/4, so the 3s have options on which races they want to do. If nothing else it is symbolic of the progress I've made and the stellar season results I've had so far. And it is indicative that my training plan is working. I didn't want to fork out the dough to hire a coach, so I decided to learn how to be my own coach. I researched and studied and asked questions, and compiled everything into a big binder that I use as a reference.
Being a cat 3 also means that I care less about where I finish in the race and more about winning primes or payouts. So I would need to finish well if the payouts are good, but if the primes are better, then I'll burn my matches going for primes instead. For the first part of this season I had to focus on placing as high as possible in order to prove to the association that I deserved the upgrade. So I am looking forward to trying different strategies and taking some risks during races for the rest of the season. I'm not sure I'll have the dedication to put in the training hours if I set a goal of moving up to a 2 next year, so I'll just enjoy being where I am now.
Posted by megabeth at 04:36 PM | Comments (2)
April 17, 2008I am making a little money. I bought SPN at 34.50 a month ago. I did not put much into it because I am afraid of buying a single stock and then losing a bunch of money. But not sure why I should have that fear, since my "index" funds/ETFs have practically lost 20% also. So much for "diversifying" risk. Anyhow, it doesn't make up for everything I've lost in the past several years, which far trumps what I've won. Investing is not for the little people.
Case in point: I put $4000 in an S&P 500 index fund in 2000, and eight years later it is worth $5400. Thus, the 'buy and hold' strategy is as much of a load of crap as timing the market or day trading. What is the best thing to do? I don't know. I think the U.S. government has set us up for years and years of heartbreak. When the market recovers, I may be shifting a lot of my holdings to risk free.
Posted by megabeth at 09:20 AM | Comments (2)
April 15, 2008I just learned that karting is a sport. People buy their own go karts and take lessons and compete with each other. I am in Atlanta at a conference and one of the vendor companies took us to Andretti's for some fun. The go cart track was indoors and had a lot of tight turns. It was rather challenging and one time I crashed into a wall and no longer need a chiropractic adjustment. After that taste of speed, we proceeded to the video game room and played the race car video game where you compete against several of your buddies at once. That's when I became insanely aggressive (in the fantasy world of video games) and started driving my race car like a maniac. It was a blast.
The following two nights I have been to dinners with various companies so my social energy meter is completely drained out. I need three days in complete solitude to recover.
We are staying at the Hotel Intercontinental, which is the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at. I have bathed an average of two times a day in order to fully enjoy the lush bathroom, which makes my bathroom at home look like a filthy public restroom in a football stadium after a game. Okay, not that bad in reality, but I feel an immediate need to renovate and open my wallet for the polished marble.
I took a 'sugar vacation' and allowed myself to enjoy the desserts that were offered to me, so I started to feel like crap today. There is a distinct correlation.
We also had a spa day and I graciously enjoyed the 90 minute massage while other people (mostly the guys) played golf in 45 degree weather and rain.
I am hoping to squeeze in a few hours of shopping tomorrow before heading back to Birmingham and getting my damn hour back. I need that hour.
Posted by megabeth at 10:02 PM | Comments (4)
April 11, 2008The website tipping.org is a place for angry people who work in the food service industry to throw tantrums and whine about how little they are getting paid.
It isn't so true anymore, but people who go to college and get master's degrees and PhDs should probably make more money than people who dropped out of high school. Otherwise, why would people suffer so much to get through medical school? They deserve to be rewarded. Maybe doctors should be the ones receiving tips. Not people who put soup in a styrofoam bowl and hand it over the counter to a customer. I'm pretty sure that being well and/or alive is more important than being fed.
What I don't understand is tipping for take out. I think a restaurant should (a) charge an extra fee for the disposable food containers and utensils and (b) raise their menu prices if the people who work there aren't getting paid enough. I tip the person who cuts my hair, and they even went to school and learned a skill, whereas putting some plastic forks in a paper bag doesn't require any training.
So if I should tip the person 20% who gives me the pizza I ordered over the phone when I pick it up, then there would be no point in ordering take-out instead of delivery. And if I ordered delivery, I would tip the delivery driver instead of the person who assembled the order. Would the assembly person be angry about this?
Why would the person who gave me a burger and fries at McDonalds (hypothetically. I don't eat there.) not deserve a tip if the person who brought me a pizza inside a box deserves a tip?
Maybe we should start tipping retail cashiers since they put the clothes I buy in a bag.
Also the people who take my credit card statement and check out of the envelope to process the payment since they had to do some work.
And the people I buy stuff from on Ebay because they went to the trouble to put the thing I bought in a box and affix postage to it.
Also the guy who puts the drinks in the Coke machine at work becuase that is super, super hard work.
Oh! I did not mean to forget the person at church who gives me the program for the day's service. They should get at least $5 each time they do that.
There has to be a point where people draw the line at tipping, and people who think they should be tipped who don't deserve it are akin to beggars.
If I tipped the people who greatly enhanced my life, then I would be leaving large sums of cash for doctors, physical therapists, and massage therapists (who I do tip generously). And also car mechanics, but since they can't be honest, they wouldn't get much anyway. And plumbers and electricians, since life would stink without those luxuries.
Posted by megabeth at 08:36 AM | Comments (3)
April 10, 2008Sometimes work is fun. Like when I get paid to go bowling. We had a 'team building' event this week at the bowling alley. And next week at a conference, we had the choice of golf or a spa day. So I am getting paid to get a massage. I'm also getting paid to race go-carts in Atlanta. This is the kind of conference I like. It's a relationship building event instead of going to hours upon hours of presentations.
There are times when work is not so fun, like when we are doing the budget or compiling data for reports we send to government agencies. Also, I am often disturbed by the fact that I spend many of my waking hours in a small cubicle. Sometimes they let us out.
Posted by megabeth at 09:51 AM | Comments (1)
April 08, 2008I am reading this book about the history and science of food and it is extremely fascinating. The process by which a hen lays an egg is amazing. I have learned a lot so far that has bolstered my cooking knowledge and skills. I checked it out from the library but due to its size I will buy a copy so I can have plenty of time to read it cover to cover.
Posted by megabeth at 10:26 AM | Comments (1)
April 06, 2008I took some vacation this week to unwind at the lake. The fish are biting good since it is spawning season. I caught around ten, most of them under 2 lbs. They were going for every kind of lures - spinners, minnows, worms and lizards. The biggest one I caught was 6 lbs. View image
I forgot to bring a hat so I borrowed my boyfriend's mother's sun visor. Niiiice.
Also I'm too chicken to touch the fish without a glove. I'm working on that. This is the first time I would remove the hook from the fish myself.
Posted by megabeth at 11:57 AM | Comments (4)