Health

Well, much like last year, I’ve been sick!  About 5 folks from our office all got hit at the same time.  So I’ve been drinking gallons of orange juice and eating nothing but bread – two things I usually avoid but which have been the only things I can stomach for the last 5 days.  I’m finally on the mend enough to come in to work today and put out the inevitable fires that sprung up in my absence and which, apparently, I am the only one able to solve.  The joys of being utterly indespensible, eh?

But I get to leave at 3 today, and Jake is probably leaving early as well.  Then we have a four-day weekend, followed next week by a five-day weekend when we go to Vegas for New Year’s!  I’m totally stoked.

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In case you haven’t heard, the Earth’s climate is in some serious shit.  Scientists have determined that the maximum safe level of CO2 in our atmosphere is 350 parts per million.  This December, world leaders are meeting in Denmark to discuss next steps on this crucial issue, but the fact of the matter is that we’ve exceeded 350 already and, most likely, whatever the world leaders propose is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done.

Concerned?

Lucky for you tomorrow is the International Day of Climate Action!  For more information on tomorrow’s events (of which there are over 4500 taking place in 181 countries), visit http://www.350.org.  Get involved, especially if you have (or plan on having) kids – it’s not just your world, it’s theirs, and we’ve gotta clean it up.

If you liked this activist post, you might also enjoy:

• National Justice for Animals Week
• This Blog Post is Fairly Traded
• Defining Poverty
• People are Inherently Lazy: Or, Why We Over-Rank Ourselves

So, in mid-July I went on Weight Watchers after the Dateable Dork’s success with the program.  WTG, DD!  Here’s a mini-update from me:

I am 5′3″ and had a starting weight of 147.  I’m now at 132 and have gone from wearing a size 8 (which were tight) to wearing a size 6 (which are very loose).  I have been participating in a collaborative research study on walking for the last 6 months, and as a part of their data collection I get a physical every 3 months.  I just had my most recent one and was told that I’ve lost 4% bodyfat since June.  Without exercise.  I look so good my boyfriend now gets hard just from looking at me and has been actively encouraging me to look at engagement rings. Continued

So, for some time now, I have been feeling like I need to take up yoga again.  There has been a lot of unbalance in my relationship (though things are absolutely fantastic right now, if you don’t count the fact that Jake woke me up with his snoring last night).  Additionally, work is a bit hellish at the moment, and I have been able to feel my body storing up rage.  I got so frustrated loading the dishwasher the other day that I broke two glasses.

So I sucked it up, went down to the campus gym (I work at a university, remember, so we have great facilities) and signed up for the regular gym membership.  Then I shelled out extra for the group exercise membership and for the yoga/pilates membership (an extra $200!).  The regular gym membership is another $200 although that’s withheld from my paychecks throughout the year and so is pretty painless, but the total that I was shelling out was over $400.  For someone who is still trying to pay off credit card debt, that’s a heckuva lotta cash.

Then I went to my first yoga class yesterday, and knew instantly that it was worth it. Continued

This is a guest post from Jackie, aka The Girl With No Name. Jackie is a popular video blogger based in Vancouver, Canada, and she specializes in fitness and achieving fitness at home. She’s also a fantastic Twitterer and her stream was so popular that she won the 2009 Shorty Award for best sports Tweets–beating out @lancearmstrong! I’ve been communicating with Jackie over Twitter and email for a couple of months now and I finally managed to pry a guest post out of her. True to form, this is a vlog that reviews some awesome tips for working out at home and why getting in fantastic shape will help you improve your dating prospects. Enjoy.

So you date. Do you date at the level you’d like to date? And by that I mean are the people showing interest in you as hot as you’d like? If not, well I know one very solid way to raise your game. Get fit!! Seriously kids, it raises your confidence level as well as your physical appearance. And are hot guys and hot babes ever attracted to confident, fit people.

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Argh! I’ve had the worst writer’s block for the last two weeks. The reason: Megan and I broke up for real and it’s f’ed up my creative process. Much more to that story…I’ll try to cover in other posts.

To bust the writing slump, I thought I’d write an easy post about the conclusion of two recent personal projects, namely, how I went vegetarian for a month and how I stopped drinking for 2.5 months.

Continued