In the form of the bullet!

• I was putting some bottles in the wine fridge this morning (w00t~!), and I noticed a tuft of cat hair on the bar countertop. The cats are obviously conducting their own building inspections. I hope we're up to code!


• I reiterate: kitties are not digging the "get locked up in the bedroom all day" routine. And of course if the door were open, they'd still spend 90% of their day in there! It's just the closed door they object to. But I don't care what they think. Until all the contractors and subcontractors hand me back their spare keys and I can be assured that no one else will be coming in and out of the house when we're not there, the cats stay sequestered in the bedroom during the day.


• Speaking of the remodel: stuff in the kitchen works! Like last night, I unpacked the microwave stuff and set up the little plate, and found a place to store the convection rack. (Ooooh fancy!) I ran it at very low power for 30 seconds. You know, just to make sure the plate was in right and able to move. And it works! Today we turned on the hood, and it's got 4 nice bright 50 watt bulbs in there. The fan is... kinda loud. But if you turn it down to 2 (out of 6), it's manageable. If I'm watching TV while I'm cooking and running the fan, I'll be very glad for those two speakers installed in the kitchen ceiling. I started putting in oven racks, but it feels too loose. Need to find the manual and make sure I'm doing it right.


• I'm wearing an inexpensive brown T-shirt I bought at Target a couple weekends ago and my new beige skirt. I look decent and am very comfy! I must go snag more of these cheap and cheerful shirts.


• Just saw a headline go by: "Unlike 1Q, Apple shares rise after 2Q report." Translated: when Charity buys Apple shares, she gets a decent earnings report but the stock tanks anyway. After they claw back up to a reasonable level, she sells them to Hubby, who then gets a hhhhhhawesome earnings report, and they go sky-high. Eh, whatevah. I am clearly not cut out to own individual stocks. I will stick to mutual funds. Or bonds.


• But yeah, so I got my Apple stock money back, and my 6-month CD matures next Friday. So when they announce the next release of the MacBook Pro, I am ready, baby! I figure they'll do a refresh in time for the back-to-school buying crowd. I'll wait till November or so to let them work all the kinks out, then SNAG!!!


• Today was "Bring Your Young'uns to Work Day." Remember when the whole idea of it was Bring Your Daughter to Work, so she can see different roles for women so she doesn't have to stick to "nurse" or "teacher" or "mommy" as a career path? Yeah, so that lasted. My company actually has organized programs for the kids now, and they shuffle them off to the auditorium or something so you hardly see them. This is a vast improvement from when it was just an excuse for the kids to eat all our cookies and download South Park cartoons at their mothers' desks. (Tru fax, saw that with my own eyes.)


• Dr. H and Dr. M back-cracked me yesterday. I consistently have tightness and issues with my mid-back, so I got the office ergonomics guru to give my desk a makeover. So he's got my chair rearranged now. It's weeeeird. Not bad, just weeeeird.


• Wanna hear something that sucks? Next month Hubby has to fly down to Tampa for a meeting at 1 p.m., then turn around and fly home! I mean, he prefers not to have to go away overnight and all, and there is value in face-to-face meetings. But doesn't that seem like a huge waste of money!? Not to mention an e-nor-mous pain in Hubby's posterior.


• I'm sneezing and blowing my nose like a mofo today. Hard to tell if it's the cold or allergies compounding the problem. Although I am grateful that the sore throat has finally! passed. Hopefully this won't last much longer.


• I do see my doctor next week, but that's because I need a new scrip for Wellbutrin. Even though it hasn't helped much lately with not overeating, I think I should stay on it. When I read that story a few weeks ago about Cabinet-level members of the administration sitting in on torture meetings, I literally got depressed. I had to shut off the TV and go to bed. Coincidentally, I had been alternating days on with days off, to try and get off it. After that, I was like, "Oh yeah. We're keeping it." I'll be interested to see what the doctor says.


• 3 shots of decaf espresso + large cup full of ice = free iced coffee at work. Take that, Starbucks!


• So glad I'm getting my hair cut on Saturday. It's becoming bushy, and no matter how much effort I put into blow-drying, I still look like a little Dutch boy with a bowl haircut by the end of the day.


• Back to remodeling news: we're meeting with a lady next Wednesday. She's a friend of Georgie's and does cool things with framing and mounting photographs. We're going to have a bunch around the 2nd floor, including two super huge ones on the dining and living room walls.


• To those of you on my F-list who need it, just know I'm pulling for you.


• And finally, boom de yada!

Yow. There is a wicked bitter conversation going on at Elastic Waist about the points program and WW's newest ad campaign. Which, to be fair, I haven't seen.

I know that Weight Watchers isn't perfect. I've gone through the pros and cons of Core and Flex. I've commiserated with friends who have crazy low Points Targets due to their smallness of frame. But if you need structure, this gives you structure. And maybe you have to tweak it a little. If you're not eating enough? Add a couple more points, see how that goes.

Personally, Vitamin W has been a help to me staying on program so far. As I've said, switching back to counting points has been painless. So the program hasn't changed, but I have changed a little. Although, I can't say that everyone who "fails" at Weight Watchers doesn't need to be on medication. But there's definitely people with food issues at the WW meetings, and that's one of the reasons I'm online only. And that attitude of "good week = loss, anything else = bad week" has to stop, and that should be a directive from the corporate level on down.

I don't know. Go read the comments over there (bring your fireproof oven mitts), and let me know what you think over here.

ETA: Here's Hubby's take on it:

Personally I would not be into the group aspect of it at all.

I think the point counting thing could be useful if a person just isn't realizing how much they're eating or how little they're exercising. For example, people might way-underestimate the number of calories in a coffee from starbucks. If they're forced to count the points, then they'll estimate that correctly and make better decisions.

I think there are a lot of people who do have confusion on those kinds of basic facts, and so I can see this helping people with that. But there are also a lot of people who have problems unrelated to information -- they know perfectly well that eating a carton of ice cream isn't good for them, but they do it anyway. That's a whole other dimension that WW doesn't really address. That sort of thing needs either (1) therapy or (2) drugs, depending on whether the source of the problem is environmental or biological....

...It's for people with bad habits or bad information who have the emotional and cognitive ability to take advantage of new information in order to develop better habits. For example, I can imagine that someone in their 40s who has been gaining a pound a year for 20 years might benefit from WW.

But people with more serious issues probably need more than just WW. I don't think everyone would benefit from vit W, but I could imagine that there are a variety of biological and personality problems that go above and beyond what WW can address. For the biological problems there are often medications (if the person is lucky -- I'm sure there are plenty of biological problems for which no meds yet exist) and for the personality problems there's therapy.

There ya go, from someone who's watched me lose and gain the same 35 pounds over the last almost-5 years.

Two examples of ideas I had where I practically smacked myself in the head and said, “Why didn’t this occur to me before?”

One: During the week, I usually cook oatmeal in my microwave rice cooker and throw it in a Tupperware to eat at work. Hubby eats a big bowl of oatmeal at home that he cooks in a pot. Sunday morning we both wanted oatmeal. I said, “Hey, can I throw my oatmeal in with yours, so we only have to dirty one pot?” DUHHHHHHHH! Why has this never occurred to us before?!

So this morning while I was at the gym, Hubby added extra oatmeal for me. He added skim milk, vanilla and a little Splenda (which is all kosher with Core), put a serving for me in a Tupperware, and put his fixings in his own serving (walnuts and apple butter). It adds zero effort for him (he was going to do it anyway), and it saves me time.

Two: Every morning I go through, “Now did I remember to take my Vitamin W or not?” Usually I do remember, but I kinda have to struggle. On my way home from work tonight, I remember, “Duh!!!! I have one of those travel vitamin pill containers, with markings on it for each day!!!” So when I got home, I put a pill in each little box, from tomorrow through till Sunday. Now I just have to refill it each Sunday for the week.

Once again. DUUUUHHH.

So it seems like Saturday = lay around on the couch, and Sunday = more industrious for me. Okay, good to know! I'll schedule my workouts accordingly and not kick my own ass for chilling out on Saturdays. I'm certainly entitled to a day off now and then.

Last night, Hubby and I went out to Acacia in Lawrenceville for our anniversary dinner. The service was kinda mediocre, and there's no ambience to speak of, just one big dining room, very loud. A shame, because the food was quite good. Our wine choice, a California pinot noir, turned out to be very nice!

Today I did some high-powered treadmill time and burned 500 calories! And I ate strictly Core today.

I wasn't hungry until much later in the morning -- huge dinner will do that to you! -- but I didn't get to eat until after we hit Target and Whole Foods. I found myself wanting another bowl of cereal, but I was able to recognize how I was feeling, know that I might start sliding into unhealthy eating, so I made a nice protein-laden salad -- chicken, soy cheese, avocado, veggies and salsa. I think the Vitamin W might have helped me today! If it can help me reason my way into doing what I know is the healthy thing to do and help lessen my cravings, that would be enormous.

Oh, and I bought myself another new fitness gadget! I don't need it, but it will be fun to have. It's supposed to calculate how much exercise you need to do to improve your fitness or maintain. And it also suggests weight training exercises to do. I got it off of eBay for way cheaper than Amazon has it! Like I said, should be fun.