Goodbye, Weight Watchers

I attended my first Weight Watchers meeting in 1995.  I lost about 20 pounds, then quit (and gained it back).  I joined again around 2000, and lost the 20 pounds again, then quit (and gained it back.)  I joined again in 2003, and over the next 3 years I lost 107 pounds and became a Lifetime member.  I maintained for a year, then quit following and gained some (not all) back.  Over the past two years, I’ve maintained an account at their website and have attended meetings irregularly.  I started going back to weekly meetings 4 weeks ago.

And, I’ve decided it just doesn’t do it for me anymore.  It’s changed.  They’re constantly tweeking the program, so that when I think I finally understand how it works, something new is added or changed.  But, what’s really been bothering me is the focus on what I call “corporate”.  When I got serious in 2003, I loved going to meetings.  It felt like a group of friends who got together to bitch about how hard it is to lose weight and to give advice.  My favorite part of every meeting was the first few minutes when people would bring in their “food finds”–things they found at the grocery or at restaurants or recipes that were low-point, filling, and good.  Since these were all local folks, it was pertinent because I knew I’d be able to find what they were talking about at the Kroger or Marsh down the street.

The local Weight Watchers used to be a franchise, part of Weight Watcher Indianapolis.  But, around the time that I quit going to meetings in 2007, they were taken over by “Corporate”, Weight Watchers, Inc. The inside of the center was remodeled so that the room no longer felt like a meeting room but more like a store.  Corporate came out with all sorts of new products, and the focus of the meetings changed from being supportive (in my humble opinion) to hawking their own products. You now have to walk past rows and rows of products full of empty calories and trans fats just to weigh in.

The meeting leaders were told they had to follow a specific format for the meetings, so the informal feel and the impromptu sharing ceased to exist.  And, the thing that bothered me the most was people were no longer allowed to talk about their food finds or share recipes unless they were specifically Weight Watcher brand items.

I was pretty active with the Weight Watcher online message boards throughout that time, and they changed as well.  They imposed rules like you couldn’t post links to any external pages.  And, you were not allowed to give out the amount of points an item (even if it is your own recipe) was because it was copyright infringement or something.  I also saw lots of folks complaining that they were told they had to remove some things from their personal websites. Whenever I had a problem or question and tried emailing them, I always received a generic response with a copy & paste text that in no way answered my question.  So, the informal feel and the impromptu sharing was nixed there as well.  Weight Watchers Corporate started to feel more like Big Brother. Oh, and their server was absolutely horrible.  I frequently had to reload a page 3 times or more just to get it to load…from several different computers and browsers and operating systems.

I wanted to give it another chance, since I had been so successful on it.  So, I’ve gone to 3 meetings in the past month.  And, I have been severely unimpressed.  It still comes off as a marketing ploy rather than a group of people who really care about you and your health.

Now, I know that they are a business and we live in a capitalistic society and every business has a right to make money.  But, I prefer to patronize business that cares about more than the bottom line, and I just haven’t seen anything from Weight Watchers recently that shows me they are like that.

So, I am not going to any more meetings.  And, I cancelled my subscription to their online website tools today.  It was a little hard to do.  For 6 years, I’ve identified myself as a Weight Watcher.  But, I’m just not feeling it anymore.  It’s time for me to move on and find something else.

Goodbye, Weight Watchers.  I hope we can still be friends.

I have time to blog again!

I am a graduate! As of May 29, 2009, I officially hold a Masters of Science in Human Computer Interaction from the School of Informatics at Indiana University Bloomington! Woot! (Thanks to Kshitiz for this pic:)

So, what have I been up to, now that I have a life again?

I’ve taken on more responsibility at work. The lead consultant in the lab has been on vacation for the past 2 weeks, and this week he’s at a conference.  So, I’ve been getting to know more about the work we do as well as running the lab and our current projects.

I’ve also recommitted to my health. See my Weight Loss Journey Pages for more details. For exercise, I have begun meeting a friend at the gym before work 3 days a week, and we strength train together. She gets routines from her personal trainer and then shows them to me, and we do them for 2 weeks before switching to a new routine.  We’ve been meeting regularly for 3 weeks now.  I am also learning to run again.  Three times a week, I follow the Couch to 5k program. I’m also trying to walk a 4-mile fitness trail with a couple of friends once a weekend.  To get back to eating more healthfully, I have started to attend weekly Weight Watcher meetings again.

I’ve been cooking a lot, lately too.  Partly for the weight loss efforts, partly to maintain a budget, but mostly because I love to cook and didn’t do much while I was in school.  It’s been great re-discovering recipes that my husband and I love. I’ve also got tons of leftovers to use for my lunches at work.

I’ve also started knitting again.  I learned to knit in 2005 and did some basic projects, but I stopped doing that when I started school.  Since I wasn’t very far along when I stopped, I’ve pretty much had to relearn it all over again. I’m going to the yarn store today after work to get the materials to begin my first project, an IU dishcloth. I’m hoping to become involved in a local knitter’s group that meets for martinis on Thursday evenings (which is nice since it’s right after my Weight Watcher meetings so I can imbibe w/out worrying about weighing in for a week LOL).

I’ve started having a social life again…I’ve gone out to lunch with friends, to the bars, and to some shows. And, I’ve got lots of things planned for the future…This Friday hubby and I are going to a minor league baseball game and Saturday we’re going to take a metal sculpture class.  Next weekend is a Phish show, a day at the Bill Monroe Bluegrass Festival, and a day out on my Dad’s boat for Father’s Day…plus plenty of other shows/events planned for this summer.

I’m attacking the projects on my to-do list that have been pushed aside for 2 years.  Someday I’ll have my home office organized and my yard landscaped and my house spotless and my professional portfolio updated

And, of course, I’ve started blogging again, as is evident with this post.  Since I’ve been in charge of the lab at work, I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to blog, but I’m slowly getting there. I’ve reorganized my Weight Loss Journey Pages; I’ve started my Gratitude Journal again; and, in addition to this post, I’ve publised a post on my professional blog, HCI Reflections.

I love not being stressed and having free time again!!

Don’t believe everything you read on the ‘net!!

Yeah, I know that sounds like an obvious statement and most intelligent people are going to take things they read on the ‘net and in email with a grain of salt.

But, that’s just not the case. People blindly forward emails without even doing a simple Google search or stopping by Snopes to verify whether or not the information is true. While you may not think that a simple act of forwarding an email without checking it out may be harmless, I have an example that proves otherwise.

My friend Tim Wood is a professor at a university in Missouri. In December, he began to get emails from random people praising him for a political essay he wrote. But, the problem is my friend didn’t write a political essay. After a little research, he discovered a conspiracy theorist’s essay that was attributed to “Tim Wood” that in essence compared President Barrack Obama to Hitler.

My friend Tim, however, saw nothing other than the name that connected him specifically to this essay, and figured it was no big deal. He knows there are several Tim Woods out there. But, recently, he was made aware of the fact that an email version of this essay is now being forwarded around the web, and this email now contains a specific reference to my friend, as it lists his university’s address, email, and telephone number!

He contacted me for help, and I did some digging, and I believe I found the source of how this thing got attributed to him specifically. There’s a website for something called the “American Independent Party”. Someone there re-posted the original essay, and I guess he/she decided to pretend to be an investigative journalist and tried to figure out who the Tim Wood that wrote the article was. I’m guessing the person Googled his name, and found my friend. Since the essay mentions that the writer is a professor of history and my friend is a professor of history and poli sci, the person at the AIP website made the rash assumption that my friend was the essay writer.

She/He never bothered to call my friend to verify this. No, he/she just re-posted the article and then at the bottom wrote “I wonder if this is the Tim Wood who wrote this” and listed my friend’s full contact information. That’s when my friend started to get the emails.

After a month or so, people started copying this essay from the AIP website and pasting in emails, which began to be forwarded around the web. Somewhere along the way, the line “I wonder if this is…” was lost and everyone began to take at face value that the contact information listed with the essay was fact.

So, now my friend has spent a lot of his time and energy fighting something that in no way did he bring on himself. This is the kind of thing that could ruin a professor’s career! Reputation is something that is invaluable for those in academia, and all those people who forwarded the email or reposted the essay on other websites with the contact information, and especially the idiot at the AIP site that posted my friend’s contact information, could have ruined an innocent man’s livelihood!

Luckily, this thing hasn’t gone viral yet, and the original article that was attributed to my friend has been removed. But, the email forwards are still happening.

This kind of blind faith in content found on the ‘net is downright dangerous. As the old adage says, “a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has gets its boots on.”

So, I am appealing to anyone and everyone that might happen upon this blog post. Please, please, please take a few seconds to reflect on whether or not the information you are about to post or forward is true and verifiable. Going to Snopes or doing a Google search to verify the content only takes a few minutes. If you cannot verify the information, then do not post or forward it.

Edgar Bronfman is a pompous A$$

About 3 weeks ago, I blogged about Warner Music Group (WMG) making people take down personal YouTube videos that contained songs performed by WMG artists.

This morning, while working out at the gym, I was reading one of my favorite magazines, Wired. I came across this essay: Why the Music Industry Hates Guitar Hero. Now, go read that and tell me if the WMG CEO Edgar Bronfman doesn’t come off as a pompous ass.

Basically, now that he sees the success that Guitar Hero and Rock Band is having, Bronfman is whining like a little kid. When the game makers first approached WMG about using it’s artists’ music, WMG should have made them pay more then, instead of letting them sign low-cost synchronization licenses. WMG didn’t have the foresight to predict that these games would be big money makers and now they’re acting like little babies because they didn’t ask for a bigger cut.

But, that’s pretty much what they’ve been doing since the advent of digital music. They weren’t smart enough to see the potential of digital media, so instead of being proactive and figuring out how to make money with the new media, they were reactive and went after P2Ps and college students. Bronfman even admitted that they made a mistake with that tactic, as can be seen in this quote. Though, he also seems to be declaring “war” on consumers, and I really fail to see the business value in that move. (Oh, and, I’m sorry, Mr. Bronfman, but war is never inadvertent! It is one of the most intentional acts humans do. You chose to start this war. And, now you are crying about it because things aren’t going your way.)

So, what are the consequences of Mr. Pompous Ass’s latest actions? MTV, the makers of Guitar Hero, one of the most popular and prolific games right now, are going to boycott any WMG artists. And, who does that ultimately hurt? The artists! Because of Bronfman’s greed, many artists are going to be facing a tougher time than they should be in this recession.

And, WMG doesn’t seem to be faring any better. WMG Stock hit an all time low on Tuesday of $1.58 and closed at $1.85 on Wednesday. This means the stock price is equal to what it costs to buy a single. “Not an album, a SINGLE. A 45.”

Bronfman and his ilk claim that they’re trying to fight “piracy” so they can protect their artist’s creative content. Bullshit. They are trying to improve their profits. Plain and simple.

Writer Ken Fisher said it best in January in his article, Privately, Hollywood admits DRM isn’t about Piracy:

DRM’s sole purpose is to maximize revenues by minimizing your rights and selling them back to you…There is simply no evidence whatsoever that DRM slows piracy. In fact, all of the evidence suggests the opposite, and arguments that DRM “keeps honest people honest” are frankly insulting. If they’re already honest, they don’t need DRM…It’s not piracy that’s the concern, it’s their ability to control how you use the content you purchase.

This is going to be a very interesting issue to watch, especially now, as the Pirate Bay trial is in session. I predict that the music industry, especially Mr. Bronfman and WMG, is in for a very bumpy ride because of their stubbornness.

The digital age is redefining and reinventing all sorts of information, including music. And, if the music industry wants to survive, it MUST change it’s business model. It needs to take a cue from Hollywood, who, when threatened by the advent of VCRs, got creative and figured out how to make money with it, rather than complaining that the new technology didn’t support their current operating practices.

NSVs

When I was losing weight a few years ago, I was very active on the Weight Watchers message boards, through which I learned about a great motivational tool. Most people track the progress of their weight loss efforts by their bathroom scale–whether or not the number on that scale goes up or down. But, that’s not a good way of tracking progress at all. In fact, if that is the only gauge of your success, you’re probably going to eventually undermine your efforts.

Losing a lot of weight in a healthy way takes a long time. It sucks, as we would all love to get the excess weight off yesterday, but that’s the reality. And, you can spend weeks, even months, doing everything right–exercising, journaling your food intake, eating healthy foods, but when you get on the scale, the number has not moved. Or, maybe it even moved in the wrong direction. I speak from experience here. Lots of experience here.

When that happens, if you have no other way to track your progress, you’re most likely going to get frustrated and lose your motivation because you’re going to believe that your efforts weren’t working. I can’t tell you how many times I walked into a Weight Watcher meeting feeling awesome, knowing that I had a great week, but when I got on the scale and wasn’t happy with the number it showed me, that awesome feeling was completely replaced by frustration. I let that number on the scale rule me and my emotions.

Through the Weight Watcher message boards, I became aware of the fact that the scale lies. Seriously.

Not all positive body changes are visible on the scale, especially not changes in muscle density. The exercise that you’ll do in any comprehensive weight loss program will help you build muscle and gain a firmer, stronger overall physique. However, because muscle is heavy and dense, you might not see a drop on the scale when you gain muscle. You might even see the scale numbers rise as you get healthier and stronger! Having more muscle and less fat is a huge part of what will make you look skinny, but your scale could never show you how much muscle you’ve built. (From The Scale Skinny Better Ways To Measure Weight)

So, you need to find other ways to measure your progress. You can take your measurements, or you can go by the way your clothes fit.

My favorite way of doing this is by tracking NSVs. Basically, whenever you do something positive, or whenever something positive happens, that is a result of your lifestyle change (notice I didn’t say dieting) it’s called a “Non-Scale Victory” or NSV. Examples could be going up 3 flights of stairs without getting winded, being able to fit in an airplane seat without a seatbelt extender, being able to cross your legs, choosing the grilled chicken over the fried, fitting into a smaller size….I’m sure you get the picture.

The reason I’m writing this post is I need to remind myself of all this. Last week I got on the scale and it showed a gain. I was pretty mad about it and for about a day and a half I took that anger out on food–I ate anything and everything that I could. But, I know I can’t continue doing that if I’m going to be successful in this weight loss journey. So, I’m back to noting my NSVs. I’m probably not going to blog about each and every one, tho. When you start paying attention, you see quite a lot of them!

But, I had one last night that I’m especially proud of. One of my biggest weaknesses is eating out. I know what I should order when I eat out. But, I usually cave and end up ordering things covered in cheese, or deep fried, or otherwise swimming in calories. Whenever I am successful at being “good” at a restaurant, I’ve usually had to work at it. I’ll look the menu up online beforehand, see what my options are, then decide before we go what I’m ordering. Then, on the way there, I visualize myself ordering and eating the “good” food. It really takes a lot of work! But, if I end up eating out on the fly, I almost always just order whatever looks yummy to me.

Last night, my husband and I were running errands after work and it got to be pretty late, and we were hungry and didn’t want to wait to get home and cook to eat. So, we decided to eat out. My husband was craving a burger, so we went to Texas Roadhouse. I have to admit that I really love their burgers, too. And, the yeast rolls with cinnamon butter. And the fried onion blossoms. When we were heading there, I was already planning on having all of that.

But, when the waiter took our orders, I actually asked for grilled shrimp, steamed veggies, and a plain baked sweet potato. And, I ate only half of it! I did allow myself one roll and some of the fried onion blossom, but nowhere near the amount I used to eat. I walked out of there feeling satisfied, but not stuffed, like usual. And, I had a yummy lunch for today!

I’m very proud of myself

Please take my informal poll

I am conducting some informal research for my employer. If you have time, could you please respond to this informal poll in a comment to this post?

Thanks so much!

QUESTION: Do you use personalized home/start pages, like iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, MyYahoo, etc.?

If so,
1) Why do you use them? What do you like about them?
2) Is there anything you do not like about them?
3) What other features would you like to see on a personalized home/start page?

If not,
1) Why not? Are there specific things you do not like about them?
2) What would make you start using a personalized home/start page (if anything)?

It’s time to rethink copyright

My friend SuzieQ is an amazing hula-hooper. And, she recently got a fun, new LED hoop that looks soooo cool when she’s hooping in the dark. She lives in another state and wanted to share this with her friends who couldn’t be there in person (like me).

So, our friend Chris had her do some hooping in his basement in the dark while he recorded it, and he posted the videos to YouTube. Now, hooping is really just another form of dance. So, it’s really pertinent that there’s music playing, because that’s what guides the hooper’s movements.

Chris and SuzieQ made a couple of videos with some different music. Here’s one:

But, I can’t post a link to the other one, which they both say is even better. And, that’s because Warner Brothers Music Group is a bunch of assholes.

See, during the other video, Shakedown Street by the Grateful Dead was playing. And, shortly after Chris posted the video to YouTube, he got an email telling him that the song was copyrighted material and he couldn’t use it in his video.

WTF? This irks me in so many ways:

1) The song came from a CD that Chris bought. That gives Chris the right to play it whenever he wants and to let any of his friends hear it when he plays it. It so happens it was playing in the background when he filmed SuzieQ. What is the difference between Chris playing it for me when I’m physically in his basement and when I’m watching a recording of his basement on YouTube?

2) If you search YouTube for Shakedown Street, you will get a ton of hits. Why aren’t all of those people told to take theirs down? If you are going to enforce a rule, you need to enforce it uniformly.

3) What if I’m at a family party and I decide to video tape my niece saying something cute, but what if we have the radio on at the time and Shakedown Street happens to come on while I’m recording?

4) The Grateful Dead allowed fans to audio record their shows and freely share those recordings as long as no money was being made. So, there are millions of copies of live versions of Shakedown Street out there. If Chris had used one of those, he would have been able to keep his video up. But, since he used a version of the song that came from a studio album, he’s told to take it down. But, it’s the EXACT SAME SONG! No matter if it’s performed live or put together in a studio, it was still written and performed by the same people, has the same chords and lyrics. Again, if you’re going to enforce a rule, you need to enforce it uniformly.

The entertainment industry needs to seriously re-think this whole issue of Copyright and piracy in this new digital age. In 2004, Lawrence Lessig published “Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity,” which is about this very issue. He’s a Stanford Law professor, so he knows a little something about it.

I really like the analogy he makes in that it’s like spraying DDT to kill a gnat. Yes, everyone recognizes that it is illegal to STEAL someone’s work for your own profit (think Vanilla Ice and Queen/David Bowie). But, honestly, how is Chris and SuzieQ playing Shakedown Street while she hoops going to hurt Warner Music Group? It’s not like people are going to watch that video and decide that they will never, ever buy another copy of that song.

If you’d like to read more on what Lessig has to say, he’s made his book available for free on the ‘net, using a creative commons license. You can find it here.

There’s another essay about this I like by Rick Garlikov here. The entertainment Industry is taking this “remake the Internet before it remakes us” stand by going after people like my friend Chris. But, would the entertainment industry being remade really be a bad thing? Garlikov points out that:

Today on the Internet there are thousands and thousands, if not millions, of sites where people have put up intellectual property for free just because they want people to be able to find and have it. While much of it is trash, there are many good sites that teach about everything from calculus and theoretical physics to practical medical information to the most mundane issues of carpet care and cooking. There was music, literature, and entertainment long before there were recording companies, publishers, and studios. I doubt that music, entertainment, research, and other intellectual, creative endeavors will disappear from the face of civilization even if we have to give up the kind of copyright laws we have now.

I agree. It’s time the current copyright laws, and this “war on piracy” are abolished. Get with the digital age, Warner Music Group, and get off our asses!

Back in the health routine

This is a followup to an earlier post about my weight loss efforts. If you’re interested, my weekly weigh-ins are being tracked here.

We got back from vacation on January 12. (Pictures from our JamCruise vacation can be seen here. And, if you’re curious what JamCruise is, this is a pretty good description, fyi.)

Surprisingly, when I got home, I found that I had actually lost a pound during vacation. Usually, on cruises and vacations I tend to gain quite a bit. When I go on vacation, one of my favorite things to do is sample local food. And, I always give myself permission to eat whatever I want because, hey, I’m on vacation!

This time, though, I think I had three things working in my favor that allowed me not to gain. 1) I love, love, love fresh seafood, and that’s all I wanted when in Florida. And, seafood is actually pretty low in calories and fat (depending on how it’s prepared–but I really do love steamed and grilled seafood!); 2) the food on the cruise was horrible. I know, cruise food is usually pretty decadent, but this cruise was more about music than food, and the money was spent on the bands and was apparently cut from the food; 3) I danced my ass off, literally and figuratively, for 4 days. I also did a lot of hiking and climbed a 100 foot Mayan Indian ruin. So I was active.

On January 13, I started back full-force with my crazy working-full-time-and-going-to-grad-school-full-time schedule. For a few months now, I had been telling myself and others that I had a plan to work exercise back into my routine. I rearranged my hours at work so that I went in later in the morning, so that I could hit the gym before work. I even talked a friend into meeting me at the gym in the mornings to help with the motivation.

And, for the past two weeks, I’ve been sticking to that plan, for the most part. I made it to the gym three days last week and three days this week. Next week, my goal is to get there all 5 days before work. And, it’s been working! In the 2 weeks I’ve been back, I’ve lost just over 3 pounds, for a total of almost 13 pounds in 12 weeks, and as I said before, I lose very slowly due to hypothyroidism, so I’m extremely pleased about that number!

I am trying to be realistic, though. It’s just the beginning of the semester, so the stress hasn’t really kicked in yet. And, when it does, I don’t expect to continue to keep losing. I will be happy if I can just maintain and not lose as the semester comes to a close.

In addition to the exercise in the mornings, I’ve been faithfully planning and sticking to my meals and journaling everything I eat. I really do believe that writing down everything you eat is the key to losing weight. It’s so easy to forget about something you ate earlier in the day and underestimate the amount of calories you’re taking in, unless you write it down.

Another key, I believe, is community. Losing and maintaining weight is downright hard, and it’s much easier if you have support. I have an incredibly supportive husband, but he doesn’t struggle with weight like I do. So, it’s nice to talk to others who know what you’re going through, who can offer advice and encouragement. And, it’s empowering to offer support to others.

When I had time to attend Weight Watcher meetings, I got that. But, the WW center is a good 5 miles from campus and their meetings just don’t work with my schedule right now. So, I need to find that community elsewhere. And, I’ve found it in a couple of places.

First, I’m a social network junkie. One of my faves is Twitter. Since I’m almost always in front of a computer, it’s pretty easy to send and receive tweets. A small group of tweeple have started supporting each others’ health efforts by tweeting the results of those efforts and including the hashtag “#tow” in the tweets (which stands for either “take off weight” or “Twitter off weight”. Basically, this makes it easy to find and support each other. I’ve found this to be incredibly motivating.

(FYI, if the above paragraph seems like a foreign language, click these links to find find out more about Twitter and tweets, and hashtags.)

Second, I’m going to start attending a class next week with others interested in weight loss. The School of Informatics, through which I am obtaining my Master’s degree, has started a wellness program which includes things like Yoga classes and stress-reducing activities. They’re also starting up a “Healthy Weigh” class that will meet during the lunch hour one day a week for 6 weeks, where a registered dietitian will discuss with up to 15 folks holistic weight management methods and look at the root causes of weight loss. I’ve signed up, so we’ll see how that goes.

As a result of all this, I’m feeling very confident and in control, have so much more energy, and my jeans are all loose!

Goodbye, Interwebs. Hello, Jamcruise!

In just a few minutes, I will be heading out the door for vacation.

My husband and I go to concerts. A LOT. A love of live music is one of the things that brought us together, and throughout our 10+ years together, we’ve seen more shows than I can even begin to guess. Whenever a favorite band (and we have lots of ‘em) is playing anywhere within a few hours’ drive, we’re there. And, if they’re not within a few hours’ drive, we might be there, too…If we can arrange for a dogsitter and vacation days.

(Yes, this hobby is one of the main reasons why we do not have children.)

We spent our last vacation in August at a camping festival. And, this vacation is being spent at another music festival. But, this is a different kind of festival. It’s Jamcruise!

We’ll still get to see several of our favorite bands, plus more that are new to us. And, we’ll still get to hang out with awesome, fun people–some new friends, some old friends. But, instead of sleeping a tent on some farm field, we’ll be in a suite on a cruise ship. Instead of eating typical camping food we have to make ourselves, we’ll be served gourmet meals around the clock. Instead of having to dig through ice-filled coolers for beer, we’ll just belly up to the bar. And, instead of staying in one place the whole time, we’ll be provided transportation to two tourists destinations in the Carribbean.

The cruise leaves Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday. But, we begin our traveling today. We’re driving 4 hours north to drop our dog off at my father-in-law’s, then we then fly out at an ungodly hour in the morning and should be in Ft. Lauderdale by tomorrow afternoon.

Hubby and I plan to tour Ft. Lauderdale Saturday until a couple of friends who are going on the cruise with us arrive. We’ll all board the shop together on Sunday and will spend the next 4 days partying our asses off! After the cruise ends hubby and I are going to spend a couple more days in Ft. Lauderdale before flying back, picking up our dog, and driving 4 hours home.

I have decided not to take my laptop. Since there are no classes right now and I’m on vacation from work, I really can’t think of a reason why I should take it with me. I want to spend my free time enjoying tunes, dancing, and relaxing. If by some crazy chance I find myself with absolutely nothing to do, then I will read the new Stephen King book I got for Christmas.

So, goodbye for now, interwebs. See ya in about 12 days.

JAG photos have been posted

I’ve posted pictures from my recent roadtrip, aka “Jennies’ Alabama Getaway” or JAG.

My friend, whose name is also Jenny, and I drove to the gulf in Alabama to visit another friend, Heather. On the way down, Jenny and I stopped in Memphis and saw Beale Street and Graceland. While visiting Heather, we went to Pensacola, FL, Gulf Shores, AL, and New Orleans. On the way back, Jenny and I stopped in Chattanooga and went to Lookout Mountain.

You can see the pictures here.