New Year’s Observations

HOW DO YOU VIEW A CALENDAR YEAR – Vertical or Horizontal?

Each year around November or December, I’ll start thinking ahead to the first few months of the new year but then dismiss the thoughts because it seems far off. I think this is because near the end of the year I feel like I’m at the bottom of the year and just biding my time until the new year comes. Then in January, I suddenly realize that February is only a couple weeks away and I feel like I need to scramble because it’s not the far off I thought it was in December! I wish I saw the months as one continuous timeline without regard to the year but I guess I’ve looked at too many calendars and my brain thinks about it top to bottom. Does anyone else have this bottom (December) and top (January) of the year feeling or am I unique?

GOOD LUCK FOOD

I don’t know much about the stories behind many of the good luck foods people suggest eating on New Year’s Day but there is definitely a variety! Typically, while growing up we always ate sauerkraut and pork which I assume was from our German heritage. Since getting married it has been hit and miss if I’ve eaten any good luck food at the beginning of each New Year. Also, living in the south has introduced a few more items to the New Year’s food list choices as well – greens (collards or other) and black eyed peas.

However, I got myself into some trouble this New Year’s Eve 2010. Thinking I would look up a recipe for sauerkraut and pork on Epicurious, I got drawn into clicking on the many other New Year’s recipes and found myself with 3 dishes (sauerkraut, greens, black eyed peas) to make on New Year’s Day. The trouble came when I wasn’t in the mood to cook yesterday so I didn’t start until around 6pm which meant I didn’t finish until 10pm! Am I the only one that finds these great recipes to try then it takes me twice as long as the time stated on the recipe to make them? Maybe I’m just overly ambitious or too much of a perfectionist in the kitchen. The recipes aren’t really difficult, just involved. Oh well, the recipes I chose turned out to be real keepers since they made less than delicious food taste quite delicious!

Hoppin’ John Salad with Molasses Dressing
(I took a risk with this recipe because it involved spicy things and slimy okra which I’m not a fan of either but the risk paid off!)

Sauerkraut with Apples
(I like the “sour” of sauerkraut but I know a lot of people are not a fan. This recipe does a good job of mellowing the “sour” taste.)

Brown Butter Creamed Winter Greens
(I believe this may be the first time I have ever fixed collards, or any fresh greens for that matter, from scratch. The best compliment came from Kendall: “I didn’t even need any vinegar!”)

Happy Holidays 2010!

I hope everyone is having a good end to 2010 and is looking forward to a great 2011. I am! I don't really make resolutions, however, I do have some ideas and plans I would love to see come to fruition next year but they won't be without hard work. So, cheers to hard work and accomplishments in 2011!

A few updates I've made to this blog in recent months haven't been noticeable in the form of posts so I thought I'd mention them.

• New color scheme - I like the new themes available. But, as you may have noticed, I keep playing with them and maybe I'll eventually settle on one I like! (Unless you read this in an RSS feed then you probably haven't noticed any changes here.)
• Two new tabs at the top for pages I created - About Me and Bucket List. I think they are pretty self explanatory and may be fun to take a look at and I hope to keep them updated.
• New sidebar widget for a new blog I recently setup on Tumblr - a micro-blogging platform that I like because it's great for quick little posts like sharing a link or photo. If you're friends with me on facebook, you'll see my Tumblr posts there as well.

Happy Holidays to you!!

LED Wall Project (Nerd Alert!)

As you know, I am not a nerd. But, I like to surround myself with nerds to boost my self esteem. Just kidding! Kinda… Recently, by the law of proximity, I became part of a project that became a minor internet celebrity of its own. I am now either loved or hated as the “dancing banana girl”. Not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed!

WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

The LED wall idea came about as a thought that wouldn’t it be cool to have a display on a wall in your house where anyone in the world could come to a website and leave a drawing or message. If you’re lucky, the video may be online and you will get to make your own drawing and then see your drawing live! To learn more about the LED wall, be sure to click through the Why?, How, and Credits links.  If you have a few minutes, watch the video at the bottom of this post or the one on the How page which nicely sums up the project visually. As of a month after the video was posted, it has received well over 13,000 views!

(Beware: Not all people on the internet have the same good taste as you so some drawings may be deemed offensive. You have been warned!) 

NOTORIETY

The project was found and featured on a few popular “nerd” websites including:

• Hack a Day (Web-enabled LED pegboard)
• ioBridge News and Projects (Send Drawings to the LED Wall via the Web)
• Makezine Blog (LED Wall looks cool, is large)

MY CONTRIBUTIONS

• Tested LEDs to be sure they worked.
• Hot glued LEDs onto the giant pegboard.
• Sorted and labeled wires after they were all soldered. There were a LOT of them.
• Acted silly while wearing a banana costume.

I also brought cookies I’d made which were quickly devoured by all the male cookie monsters in attendance.

Maybe I am a nerd, at the very least I’m sure I’m one for enjoying hanging out with everyone while this project was assembled!

(LED Wall from kennyc on Vimeo.)

Triathlon Training 2010: Week 10

DAY	SCHEDULED	ACTUAL	COMMENTS
Monday	OFF	OFF	I was out of town the first half of this week so didn’t really do anything but it’s supposed to mostly be a rest week anyway so I didn’t worry too much.
Tuesday	Swim: 500 yards Run: 30 min	OFF	See Monday comment.
Wednesday	Bike: 15 miles	OFF	See Monday comment.
Thursday	OFF	DDR	I played the Dance Dance Revolution game on the computer with Kendall for a while which is definitely a workout unto itself.
Friday	Swim: 200 yards Run: 15 min	Volleyball	Played volleyball for a couple hours. A great workout and one of my favorite sports to play.
Saturday	RACE DAY!	OFF	Intended to do the triathlon today but it didn’t work out.
Sunday	OFF	Swim: 400 yards (10.5 min, 2.6 min/100 yds) T1: 3.5 min Bike: 12 miles (1 hr 8 min, 5.6 min/mile) T2: 2.5 min Run: 5k/3.1 miles (45.5 min, 14.7 min/mile) TOTAL: 2 hrs 10 min	The swim went really well, I think it was the first time I swam continuously for the required distance. The transition from swimming to biking was probably less than ideal since I had to deal with a backpack and getting out of the pool complex which wouldn’t be a factor in a real race. My legs only felt a slight bit like jello but that feeling quickly disappeared once on the bike. The biking went well too. Didn’t have to deal with traffic too many times thankfully. I could really tell the longer trail rides I’d been doing had helped. The next transition was much easier since I was mostly dropping things off and didn’t have to deal with a packing things like pool keycards and goggles into a backpack anymore. The run was more of a walk and the most difficult part as expected. Not to mention it was last. I’d trained the least for running so anticipated it wouldn’t go nearly as well as the rest but I knew I would be able to walk at the very least. I could tell my muscles were getting tired. My calf muscles got really tight and my lungs started burning and heart rate increasing when I tried to run so could only do that in very short bursts. I did it!

Overall Thoughts:

• The saying goes you can do anything you put your mind to. It’s easy to believe it when you’re not trying to do anything. It’s harder to believe when you’re working to achieve something. But, it feels oh so good when you actually do something that took work.
• I never signed up for the official triathlon because I did not feel prepared enough especially for the running portion and I also did not have a proper bike. I ride a knobby tire mountain bike instead of the smooth tire road bike. So, I saved my money and made my own triathlon around where we live. I’m lucky enough to have a neighborhood pool I could use to do this.
• It was hard BUT, at this point, I’m ready to do it again! Am I crazy? Yeah, probably. The schedule has been a great motivator for me to do regular exercise which was one of my main goals. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do because I’ve gotten used to training as part of my life. Maybe I’ll try to do an official one or start training for longer lengths! For sure I need to work on running more at the very least.

Here is the Google spreadsheet I made to track my progress.

Triathlon Training 2010: Week 9

DAY	SCHEDULED	ACTUAL	COMMENTS
Monday	OFF	Whitewater Rafting, Lake Swimming (All Day)	Out of town doing lots of non-training but great exercise.
Tuesday	Swim: 600 yards Run: 30 min	OFF	Travelling and tired.
Wednesday	Bike: 15 miles	OFF	Wasn’t feeling well.
Thursday	Swim: 600 yards Walk: 45 min	OFF	Feeling a little better but got busy and didn’t do anything. :(
Friday	OFF	Bike: 12.5 miles (1 hr 6 min, 5.28 min/mile)	Not quite as good of a time as I had been doing but it went well.
Saturday	Run: 60 min	OFF	I intended to go run but I don’t like running because it’s the most difficult and least fun for me. So, I made the worst decision and was lazy.
Sunday	Bike: 20 miles Walk: 30 min	OFF	Another good intentions day that just didn’t happen with too much other stuff going on.

Overall Thoughts:

• While biking, I tried out another exercise app on my phone called Endomondo and I really like it. Simple to use, elegant interface, but maybe doesn’t have quite as many details as the app, My Tracks, that I had been using.

Here is the Google spreadsheet I made to track my progress.

Triathlon Training 2010: Week 8

DAY	SCHEDULED	ACTUAL	COMMENTS
Monday	OFF	OFF	Hey, look I did what the schedule said to do.
Tuesday	Swim: 500 yards Run: 30 min	Run: 32 min (2.5 miles, 12.8 min/mile) Swim: 500 yards (15 min, 3 min/100 yards)	Running is hard lol. I’m finding the beginning of any exercise is the most difficult until I find a rhythm or settle into it a little then it gets less difficult.
Wednesday	Bike: 15 miles	Bike: 10 miles (49 min, 4.9 min/mile)	I had a limited amount of time to bike so I made the best of it and did pretty well!
Thursday	Swim: 600 yards Walk: 45 min	OFF	I was doing well following the schedule until today, oops.
Friday	OFF	Swim: 600 yards (18 min, 3 min/100 yards)	At one point, early in training, I remembered thinking I’d NEVER be able to swim this distance. But, I’ve done it and in a respectable amount of time!
Saturday	Run: 50 min	OFF	Got busy doing “more important” things to prepare for an upcoming trip so didn’t get any exercise in today.
Sunday	Bike: 20 miles Walk: 30 min	Swim: 600 yards (18 min, 3 min/100 yards)	Didn’t intend to do anything this day because I would be travelling. But, my sister-in-law was in town and wanted to swim so I managed to get some exercise in which was great!

Overall Thoughts:

• It’s less than 2 weeks until the triathlon that we intend to try. But, we have not signed up because we only have one bike and Kendall has been working hard without success yet trying to find us road bikes.

Here is the Google spreadsheet I made to track my progress.

The 7 Link Challenge

After enjoying first reading about this challenge on a travel blog (Life After Cubes) I regularly follow, I read about the source of the challenge and decided to give it a go even though I really don’t have a very robust blog!

My First Post: The beginning of a blog... (8 January 2009)
I had FINALLY made a blog! It was something I’d contemplated making for so long and I finally went for it. I still have so many ideas about things to post but rarely do the ideas get past the inside of my head. I need to get better at that! The photo a day idea dwindled because I generally posted my photos on my facebook account and most of the people reading my blog would have already seen them.

The Post I Enjoyed Writing the Most: Olympic Opines
This is really a series of posts but I was so excited watching the Olympics! I kept trying to make my thoughts concise enough to fit on my facebook status updates but I had too much to say and was getting frustrated trying to make it work. Also, these posts brought life back to my blog after a several month hiatus.

A Post with a Great Discussion: Triathlon Training: Week 1
Not too many of my posts even have a discussion so I went looking for the ones with the most comments. 3-4 comments was the most I found so thank you to anyone who has commented! This post was my first of several detailing my triathlon training efforts now covering two summers. I’ve really enjoyed the occasional encouraging comments that have appeared under these fairly boring and statistical training posts.

A Post on Someone Else’s Blog I Wish I had Written: My Last Day... (from Location 180)
There are many posts I wish I had written but this one is probably the most current I’ve felt that way about. I’ve been thinking about writing a similar post because I can relate very much to most everything in it. But, I am not the most gifted with words, so I spend too much time thinking about what and how to write my thoughts and not enough time actually writing. Instead of writing my own post, I think I’ll keep this post saved to go back and read in the future as a reflection of my own experience.

My Most Helpful Blog Post: Old Camera/New Camera
This category was difficult for me to decide upon because there’s not much I’ve written that would qualify as “how to” or helpful. I considered my post about how I would train for the triathlon or my thoughts on the Olympics but I already have links to them in another category. Yes, there are actually two posts, so I kinda cheated. But, I think the old and new camera comparison was helpful for many of my 2009 posts. People always like to know with what, how, and where photos are taken. BTW, I still recommend the Canon PowerShot SX110 IS to people on a regular basis. You may send me a commission via PayPal. ;-)

A Post with a Title I Am Proud of: Tropical Fish Salad
For this post, I combined two normal phrases (tropical fish and fish salad) to make one longer phrase that makes sense but also makes you scratch your head over what it might mean.

A Post I Wish More People Had Read: Rage Against the Machine
The title of this post also tied for winner of the previous category. It’s a pretty funny story and photo so I thought I’d put it under this category.

What is your favorite post of mine? Are there any blogs you read that you would recommend to me?