And the LeapFrog Tag winner is…
Mar 31, 2009 Contest/Giveaway
Bonggamom! She won a LeapFrog Tag Reading System and five books for herself, and an expanded-memory Tag and ten books for her local library! This is a fabulous prize. My daughter really loves her Tag.
And I’m happy to say I’ve been sticking to – and often surpassing – my reading pledge of ten minutes a day. Although Bonggamom’s pledge puts mine to shame: she pledged 30 minutes for each of her three kids!
While I’m talking about giveaways, I also owe the last winner, Arlene Feix, an apology. She won her Oral B prize a full two-and-a-half weeks ago, and I have yet to get it in the mail. It’s been close. It’s been in my car two different times, heading for the Post Office, and then fate intervened and I never got there. I really really hate going there so it didn’t take much for me to change course. But it is actually in my calendar for tomorrow morning. I’m taking the box to school with me when I drop the kids off, and then walking right to the Post Office! You can all give me a very public beat down if I don’t do it.
Anywho, thanks to all who entered, and don’t forget, I’m giving away four copies of the new Monsters vs. Aliens video game!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
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Tags: Leapfrog TAG Touch Learning System, Monsters vs. Aliens, Oral B
Dieting without exercising is…
Mar 31, 2009 Weight Loss
…The lazy way out? Impermanent? Hopeless?
I’ve never relied on exercise to lose weight before. I’m just too lazy. Dieting is passive. I have to eat anyway, so I can just make better choices when I do, right?
Not so sure anymore. If that were true, this wouldn’t be an almost 20-year-old problem for me.
It’s not like I’m a complete couch potato. There’s at least a mile of walking built in to even my laziest of days, the days where I don’t leave the house except to drop off and pick up at school. It’s not much, but it’s more than I would get living in the suburbs, waddling from house to SUV to building back to SUV. A more typical day involves lots of subway stairs and walking ten or twenty blocks to get somewhere.
Now that the weather is warmer, many days will also involve stalking celebrities by bicycle (finding parking is nearly impossible). But even though biking around Brooklyn is hard (and often terrifying), it’s not exactly aerobic exercise. There’s too much traffic, too much stop and start. The only time my heart rate really goes up is when a truck is parked in the bike lane or when a Chinese delivery guy is speeding towards me going the wrong way, and I’m boxed in on the side.
And occasionally, I lift weights. And by occasionally, I mean that you have to count the time between sessions in weeks, not days.
So, while I’m fairly active, I’m not doing much sustained exercise. I’ve tried. I had a membership to the YMCA for about six months. I went about six times. The Y had just gone through a huge renovation and was fabulous – clean new locker rooms, all new equipment, individual TVs on every single treadmill and elliptical trainer. But I still couldn’t make myself go.
I thought maybe an exercise DVD was the answer, and I did find a good one – a Pilates video from Gaiam. The exercises were great, but it was just too repetitive. I think I have some kind of adult ADD.
On the other hand, today was a good day with the food. I made it all the way to dinner effortlessly on only about 400 calories. Used up another 400 on dinner. Just had a snack. And I still have 200 more to go. I see Oreos in my future.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: bike riding, exercise, Gaiam, Pilates, Weight Loss
The nuts are coming to get us!
Mar 31, 2009 What's Going On
No, I’m not talking about Muslim extremists (ba-dum-bum!). I’m talking about pistachios. Salmonella-tainted pistachios. There’s another giant nut recall. A California plant has voluntarily recalled a million pounds of pistachios. A lot of these pistachios were likely used in other foods, so more recalls are sure to follow. Nobody has died, but the plant is being very cautious, probably in light of what happened not long ago with peanuts.
I always thought I was safer being a vegetarian.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: peanuts, pistachios, recall
Good God, it’s raining toddlers
Mar 31, 2009 Amy in the Morning
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: video
He threw himself under the bus
Mar 30, 2009 Amy in the Morning
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: video
I love my ‘hood…between shootings
Mar 29, 2009 What's Going On
I was in the dining room on my laptop (back of the house). My husband was in the living room watching TV (front of the house). Our son got out of bed and came downstairs. He said he heard a really loud “thump.” I told him it was his imagination and to get back to bed.
Ten seconds later my husband ran back here to get his phone, saying there had just been a shooting outside of our house. Then he said maybe it was a car hitting another car. But regardless, he saw a man running away while tucking something into the back of his pants.
The cops were there before I got to the window to look. A stolen car, maybe, and the driver hit another car and then took off? I think it must have been a chase, because my husband saw the first cop car arrive on the scene within a minute, and it came down a one-way street the wrong way. So either the car was stolen, or the driver had something in the car that he didn’t want to be caught with, or he himself didn’t want to be caught. Whatever, there’s now probably an armed man running around local backyards trying to elude police. Which doesn’t make it much different from any other night, except that I know it’s going on.
There are about eight cop cars out there now. There was no shooting. Just a chase and a crash and the driver ran.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Abortion, Obama, and Jesus – Oh my!
Mar 29, 2009 Amy in the Morning
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: video
When is a person not a person?
Mar 28, 2009 What's Going On
Apparently, the answer in this case was “When that person is in a wheelchair.”
I just found this on Consumerist (one of the best sites on the web, BTW). This guy was at the airport, in his wheelchair, waiting with his luggage, when an airport employee started loading his luggage onto a cart because it was unattended. Despite the man’s protests that HE was attending it, the employee wouldn’t let go of this ridiculous notion that the luggage was abandoned. It took the intervention of a pilot to get things sorted out.
Go read the wheelchair-bound travelers’ account, and be pissed.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: airport, luggage, wheelchair
