I got your PointsPlus right here, pally!

So... three months on the job and I'm happy that I've not gained any stress weight. In fact, since I still have stress weight from the last two jobs plus gained poundage from years of medication roulette, and since I like the idea of "1) here's how you calculate points, and 2) only eat so many points a day to lose weight," I'm doing Weight Watchers At Work. (Yes, I'm doing this through my awesome workplace in a supportive group setting, and I have to say, the stresses I have there are familiar yet somewhat unfamiliar, and I definitely do not want to let the stress go to my thighs and arms again!)

So far, so good. Today was our three week weigh-in and so far I've lost 6.2 pounds. I'm not drinking Dr Pepper as often but I am drinking the shit out of diet 7up, diet Sprite, and diet Sierra Mist (and the dSM strawberry kiwi is impressing me). I'm not doing much exercise because of post-exertional malaise (thank you fibro and Sjogren's for the lovely uber-fatigue) but we found an elliptical that doesn't make my creaky knees hurt and I'm working out on that as I'm able. I also go down and up at least 6 flights of stairs a day so that's helpful.

Things I've learned from the first 3 weeks of Weight Watchers (because there's always something new to learn even with already knowing a ton about nutrition and healthiness and all that):

- Following the PointsPlus thing is really freakin' easy, especially with the handy special calculator. For fatigued and sometimes fibrofogged and somewhat lazy me, this rocks.

- Some of the proprietary Weight Watchers food is actually pretty good. I'm loving the mint cookie crisp snack bars, chocolate pretzel snack bars, bbq chips, and chocolate swirl cookies something fierce, although I'm definitely looking for popped bbq chips when grocery shopping since it's a lot cheaper. The snack bars are literally two bites worth of food, but that's really all that's needed for a quick snack since these are kinda dense and taste more rich than they look.

- Feeling deprived means you're doing it wrong. It's all about choosing what to eat, and when. Today for breakfast I had morning meds, a vanilla Chobani, and coffee with almond milk at 7:30 am. For a 9:50 am pre-two-meetings-in-a-row snack I had a mint cookie crisp bar. For lunch at 12:45 I had four slices of honey deli ham, 1 slice of colby jack cheese, and 1 tbsp of light Miracle Whip on an everything thin bagel, along with 15-16 French onion Sun Chips and some diet Sierra Mist. For a why-am-I-still-at-work snack at 5:40 pm, I had a chocolate pretzel blast bar. For dinner at 6:45 pm I had some strawberry kiwi diet Sierra Mist with a SmartOnes ravioli florentine, followed by 30-32 Sun Chips (harvest cheddar and french onion) and evening meds. I don't feel deprived At All. Points-wise, this takes up my 26 daily points and 9 of my 49 point slush per week. (It actually takes up 11 points but I had 2 activity points and traded those for food points. For me, 10 minutes of low intensity activity equals 1 activity point, and lotsa stuff counts as activity.) If I feel hungry later on tonight, I'll have some apples or cherries or grapes. Actually, cherries sound kinda good right now. BRB.

- A sushi roll is generally 12 points (3 points per 2 roll slices). Nigeri is better at 3 points per 4 nigeri. A hibachi filet mignon meal at Benihana (includnig veggies, soup, salad, etc.) is freakin' 27 points. I could splurge on that if I wanted to but yikes.

- Nuts are from the devil, y'all. Holy bajeebus. I'm way better off as a steakaholic!

- I generally eat healthy anyway, but now have a better idea of how much I go overboard when I know I go overboard. Like when I splurge on the coconut shrimp at anywhere. Or use as much olive oil as I'd normally use for any kind of stir-fry.

- I've totally missed out on incredibly indulgent eating, thanks to combinations I've learned about from coworkers. The french fries in a Frosty thing I knew about, but not the breadsticks dipped in alfredo sauce.

- I'm kind of an emotional eater in that I'll graze a lot and not really care about how much I graze, especially when I'm bored. When I'm upset, I go for either dairy (which usually makes my gut protest all violent-like) or fatty (nuts or the aforementioned coconut shrimp). Otherwise, if I'm really upset or in the zone doing work or focused on whatever, I'll forget to eat.

- I've tended to not remember to eat lunch until around 2pm for many years. Now I'm straight up eating lunch at 11:30am some days, by 12:45pm other days.

- I've been really pissy the last few days, wanting to eat a ton of anything in sight because my metabolism is currently ramped up, but yay for apples and carrots. Apples and carrots (and Sun Chips) are delicious.

- I'm totally getting a ton of protein-filled yumminess the next time I shop for groceries. Mmm... bison. Speaking of protein-filled yumminess, it is possible to go to Babe's Chicken House and eat only smoked chicken and a little bit of corn and come out absolutely stuffed and satisfied. Their smoked chicken is what we had for Thanksgiving or Christmas last year, or was it the year before? I dunno. I don't care. It was totes worth it.

In other news, fibro/Sjogren's flares from summertime really suck, photography is happening in bits and pieces, my Sims 3 addiction is still in place, and I have a good start on a screenplay I've been asked to write. It'll be a docu-fiction, and I'm really amazed that there's not been a movie done about the particular era of time I've chosen. The setting combined with the perspective of the person with the brilliant story idea makes me want to get it written as quickly as possible so no one else ganks the awesomeness. Seriously, I don't know how this isn't already a movie, and no, I'm not even mentioning general details since omg this is not going to be ganked from me!

And now is the time on Sprockets ven ve danz! 

Oatmeal. Oatmeal is cool.

Today is National Oatmeal Month. I learned this by searching for the cooking time of rolled oats. I'm incredibly loving the texture of the rolled oats I got from the bulk aisle at Sprouts (99 cents a pound, y'all!), mixed with Kerrygold butter and pure dark maple syrup (Sprouts brand). OMG. OMG to the max. It didn't take much longer to cook than the quick oats - instead of cooking for one minute, I cooked them for like, three, about when the water evaporated. I used a cup of oats and a cup and a quarter of water since I knew I'd be cooking them longer. Total om nom nom nom more.

More links to oatmeal goodness:

Wiki on oats

You're Doing It Wrong: Granola

Warm Up With a Healthier Bowl of Oatmeal

Blueberry Banana Oat Bread

Ooh - National Oatmeal Monday is coming up!!
Oatmeal: True Comfort Food

I have a bag of award-winning Bob's Red Mill steel cut oats in our pantry and so can't wait to go all nom. I've had McCann's Irish Oatmeal (also steel cut oats) before but Bob's was $2.99 for 24 oz. at Sprouts (I heart Sprouts) so meh. Very seriously considering ordering from Bob's here.

And now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!

Incidentally, my most favorite Sprockets clip is so disturbing, but it's so awesome. It features Kyle MacLachlan, for Einstein's beautiful and angular sake. Hubby and I watched "Dune" over the weekend, so I had to find this clip online. Now I am as happy as a little girl.

I'm so confused (but not really).

I'm eagerly hoping that the DNS propagation thing finishes quickly so my website can resolve. Um, the website that I'm consolidating everything under, like photography and writing and social media and whatevs. I decided to pay a little extra for an easier interface and I am flipping out still. I'm so used to DirectAdmin that cPanel so far is seemingly shockingly suspiciously easy to work with, or would be when I figure out where everything is. It's confusing. I'm not used to my interface opening every single thing-I-wanna-work-with in a separate tab. It is freaking. me. out. big time. but I'm sure it'll get easier.

I'm mainly curious as to if it'll be easier for several of my peeps to work with since I'm aiming to transition web work to them. Like, will my kinfolk be able to grok which feature does what? Will my small business owner friends be able to pick things up more quickly with this interface or the other one? Like I said, hopefully my site will resolve soon so I don't get error reports and can actually see what the page looks like live. I'd be able to see what it should look like if I were using DirectAdmin, so I'm sure the feature is in cPanel somewhere but I haven't found where yet. This is confusing me way too much, for something that should be easier to work with. Then again, one of my mottos is, "Why do things the easy way when you can do them the hard way?" so *shrug*.

One of my Facebook friends shared a text photo that says, "Missing someone isn't about how long it's been since you've seen them or the amount of time since you talked. It's about that very moment when you find yourself doing something and wishing they were right there by your side." I commented, "Very true. Some days, like today, it's pretty sucky, but for the most part it's great when this happens. :)" Today's a private anniversary day for me (when there is celebration of something significant in one of my past lives within this life), and this one has me not as nostalgic as past years but more frustrated with lack of overall communication with a person related to this day. I'm not going to describe this as well as I'd like because I don't have the perfect words, but I'm a bit sad that I can't talk with this person as I used to. There were years of friendly banter and these conversations of greatness that would occur, and for some years there's been nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. (Okay, maybe 1 or 2 brief things if whatever subject was interesting, I guess.) And that's fine, really, since life changes, but to me it's such a shame when people don't maintain friendly relationships even superficially (like dropping a random note a few times a year). I'm on friendly speaking terms with people who've been way more involved with huge intensely messy parts of my life, and most of them are not as nifty as the person I'm thinking about, so I'm all "what a waste" right now. Sigh.

That said, there are somewhat equivalent people in my life I'd rather not hear from more than once or twice a year (and I'm sure I'm in this category with said person above), but I'd still love to hear from them and catch up with them about life things. There are also people I converse with on Facebook a bit more superficially than that (dropping random comments whenever, and sometimes sharing various media bits), and I miss them and they know it. That's how things should be. Most times they miss me too, and that's always neat. I haven't seen any of these people I'm talking about in for-freaking-ever, but that's okay. Now I'm a little confused on what my point is, besides that I wish I heard from some people more often and like before, but some things are too much to ask from life, and that's sad. It's like, some people are idiots, and they can't help but be idiots, but they could at least try to not be so idiotic. (See, not a good description, but you know what I mean.)

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance.