Tofurkey Italian Sausage

Been eating a lot of meat lately, so I was excited to try Tofurkey Italian Sausage for breakfast sauteed with shiitake mushrooms in olive oil.  I was feeling meh before breakfast, but am now feeling optimistic.  M. decided to go downstairs and get ritz crackers from my mother-in-law rather than eating any of the foods I offered her.  I have to watch these situations where healthy choices for me don't result in healthy choices for my kids and maintain a balance where we can all be healthy.

Breakfast was positive this morning. I got a spicy cheese dog with sauerkraut and mustard, and a black Colombian coffee. $2.77.  This was at the Circle K at 3321 Apex Hwy 55.  You can put as much sauerkraut on your hot dog as you want, and no one judges you for not eating it with a bun.

Typical afternoon

Managed low-carb for breakfast and lunch.  Picked up R from school with plans to take them somewhere, (the library?  a playground?  a park?  a hike?  the mall?) 

After that ...

Knew we had to eat something before grocery shopping.  Kids asked for ice cream.  I said how about smoothies instead.  Started driving toward smoothie place. Kids started fighting about whether or not radio should be on. I stopped at Saladelia instead of smoothie place because it sounded healthy and I was too hungry to listen to them scream about the radio. One kid chose fruit and pumpkin muffin. Other kid chose fruit and croissant with chocolate chips. (I said no to cupcakes and brownies).  I got a square of lasagna (not low carb or low calorie, but atleast it wasn't ice cream, right?  All the fat from the cheese and meat will slow down the absorption of the starch from the noodles into my bloodstream) and a side of green beans in a tomato sauce with onions and garlic.

Price:  about $25 including tip.

Lasagna was cold in the center. Green beans tasted like they came from a can instead of fresh.

As we were leaving, kids were running around in circles refusing to walk out the door, because they'd made a friend. Manager came out and fussed at me because my kids were running around in circles. I said "I'm trying to leave."

It's been a long time since I was holding something in one hand (a half-eaten muffin and a cup of fruit) and a door in the other hand, and had someone fuss at me because I didn't have two more hands to grab my kids and drag them out of the place.  How many arms do men think women have?

People will say I'll save a lot of money by just keeping snacks in the car, but what? 

My mom would have almonds.

Hello old blog from 9 years ago

Now this blog is going to be about prediabetes. What that boils down to, is this is mostly a journal about walking and eating in NC.

More specifically, this is about me trying to avoid Type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is chasing me. I am running. Actually, as you might have guessed, I don’t run much. Historically, exercise has not really been much of a thing, for me.

With type 2 diabetes, controlling one’s blood sugar is a way of life.  It’s all-encompassing.  It’s a never-ending cycle of staying conscious of one’s decisions.

I am not there yet, but I am close enough to call out the stops on my graduate school plans and rethink my future. Maybe I need to become a chef? I definitely need to be in control of my food, my sleep, and my exercise. Graduate school will throw that out of balance, so no graduate school.

Here’s the thing:  I don’t check my blood sugar. I am not approved to possess diabetic test strips. I have no way of knowing if I am actually doing well or not in my quest for health except by listening to what my body tells me.  That’s why it seems essential to keep track of supposed success and failure with a journal.  What did I eat?  How did I feel?  What happened?  Was my family willing to eat it? Did the decisions that were healthy for me seem healthy for my family?

This might be boring, but atleast you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to, and I won’t feel the need to over-share to my therapist and coworkers and brother.

in google earth

with parking lots

homework

After dinner sat down with my homework tonight. I figure I don't know whether I need to go in to class on Thursday until I sit down and do it at home and see if there are any problems.

It went pretty straightforwardly. I'm not done yet, but I did figure out how to fill in the blanks in the fields, (oh, i have to be in an edit session). And now all my buildings have names and numbers. Now I just have to give them stories, which seems like it won't be too difficult. And do the parking lots. Not a big deal. No worries.

Here's a picture of what central campus currently looks like.

Campus geodatabase.

The top image is data frame 1. The bottom image is the geodatabase created from the CAD layer.

I created a raster catalog file, but it turned out blank. I'm not sure what this means, nor how to use it to move on to updating the buildings layer and heads-up digitizing.

progress

Got my husband to somehow uninstall and reinstall the software. Seems to be working now.

Trying to catch up...

I asked my husband if I should do the most recent classwork first or attempt to catch up chronologically. He said I should attempt to catch up chronologically, so that I will fully understand the covered material. so I started with module 1. since I missed the first class. I defined the definitions, i took notes of the PowerPoint. I was good and studious. I made it to module 2. I looked over all that material. I read chapter 4 of the textbook. I downloaded the data for the "active learning exercise."

I had bought the textbook with the 60 day trial on Monday. On Tuesday during my dinner break between work and the school board meeting, i installed it. I wasn't around when it finished installing, but i assumed it did OK because it seems to be installed. Today I dug the envelope it was in out of the trash to find the registration code. (oops). typed it in. was conveniently able to register with what appeared to be no problems.

and then I go to open ArcCatalog and I get this message. "ArcGIS Desktop has encountered a serious application error and is unable to continue."

It asks me if I would like to send an error report. And it doesn't open.

I have never installed any GIS software on this particular computer before. This is my husband's old computer.

another why i wasn't in class post.

just got home from animal control board meeting. had to go to this one. a lot has been happening in the animal control world.

Project 1

Not sure what to say about this one. People are telling me it looks good, but I think it's a mess. Thankfully the focus here isn't exclusively visual, and note that I managed to pull it off with as few labels and annotations as possible. Yay. That's a relief, anyway.

I did forget to add the real estate disclaimer.

"This map was created for Generic Properties LLC, as a visual representation, based on the best data available. It is not to be used as a property survey, a measure of your exact boundaries, or a treasure map. Do not try to find your way home with it, and do not base your home's site plans on it."

I was going to write a grand satirical real estate disclaimer note. It was going to be funny, unlike the above rather weak attempt.

Anyway, I'm not sure why the manhole covers don't go past AB Tech. No sewer for AB Tech. This is arbitrary and strange. But I figure my hypothetical clients don't care about the sewer lines at AB Tech. Just the ones in Kenilworth.

Subdivision angst

Yeah, I am definitely downloading "subdivisions" and definitely getting "zoning." It is, of course, Sunday, but I called the GIS office in Asheville and told their answering machine about the problem. (since the phone number was handily in the righthand corner of the web page). Maybe they will even fix it tomorrow and then I can make more progress on homework...

Now in GIS 215

Every time I try to download the subdivisions file, I end up with the same thing as the zoning file instead. I guess I will try again.

Missed the first day of class. Had some kind of weird stomach virus. Left work early, threw up my lunch, went home & slept a lot.

I'm not sick that often. It just always seems to happen on the first day of class. Which is insanely irritating.

Finally found the jump drive that had my original bike map on it. damn.

Color

Explanatory Notes

In exercise 1 I didn't have a hospitals layer, so I just labelled the cities as if they were hospitals. I figured the point of the exercise was that I could display the H symbol, not that I could find the right layer and put it in my map.

Similarly, in exercises 2-4 I didn't have any watershed data, so I used precipitation zones. I'm sure it looks sort of different, but the things I did to symbolize the layers are the same.

Also, on the challenge problem, the assignment said "show the major roads using the same symboloby as in the South Dakota map we used earlier in this chapter." Since I didn't have the SD_Roads.lyr file, I used the USA layer file that had a particular way of depicting roads on it.

My intention is not to be sloppy with the work, but I figure this is one of those times when being a perfectionist is overrated and the point is to prove that you can display stuff in different ways. and since I accidentally went out of my way and Followed Every Single Step of the entire chapter, when apparantly we were only supposed to do the bits labelled "Exercises" and "Challenge Problem", I feel pretty not guilty about the whole thing.

as far as journal entry goes, not too many thoughts from anna for the moment. just that I'll try to work on that whole paying attention in class thing when the professor is saying something important. ;) Hope your day gets less ughghghgh.

journal and explanations still forthcoming. going home now, eating snackish dinner, sleeping.

exercises 3,7,8

journal entry

journal entry and explanations forthcoming, but for now, going to sleep.