Goodbye, World

After some consideration, I've decided to become an ex-pat from Blogland.  I just unsubscribed from all the blogs in my Google reader, and this is going to be my last post.  It's not that there aren't blogs that I enjoy reading- I do- see my sidebar for many examples- and that I haven't appreciated the connections I've made through Blogland- I have- but it's time for me to go.

When I really think about what I want to do with my free time- breaks at work, time in the early morning- reading blogs and writing a blog that very few people read aren't on that list.  Back when I was racing a bunch and getting connected to other runners, it was a lot of fun, but my priorities have changed.  

I'm not going into total hermit-mode.  I'll come by and visit other blogs sometimes- to see pictures of babies born and laugh at funny captions and Paint drawings- but I want that to be a conscious action, not something I default to doing while I'm waiting for a program to run.  

I'm also not going to take the blog (or my earlier running blog) down because I *think* I'd like to go back to look at what was going on in my life from 2008-2011 some time.  And who knows, after a break, maybe I'll pull a Brett Favre and come back out of retirement 10 times.  

I don't expect comments or anything, I just didn't want anyone to think I'd fallen off the actual Earth.  Just the blog Earth. Goodbye!

Six Things Saturday

1. I finally got my head to touch the floor in this pose in yoga yesterday.  Now I can start working on pushing up into a headstand.  I'm sure that won't take long ;)

From Yoga Journal

2. As of 3pm yesterday, I'm one week caffeine free.  I'm not saying I didn't want a sweet, wonderful delicious Diet Mt. Dew at about 3pm yesterday, but I'm still going strong.

3. I also drank my last soda yesterday.  Because of #2 I have no excuse for drinking sweet, wonderful, delicious Diet Mt. Dew anymore.  I'll probably have some soda on special occasions... I do love Great Dane root beer... but it's out of my day to day life.

4. I want a fish nightlight.

5. I finished a major revision of a paper yesterday, and it was a huge relief to send it off to the front office to be formatted and sent to coauthors.  When/if it gets published, it will be my first first-author publication.

6. I'm 17% through the second Hunger Games book.  Do I try to finish it this weekend but have to wait longer (I can get the third book from the Amazon lending library in March) to read the final book or try to stretch it out but have to wait longer to find out what will happen???  Decisions, decisions.

What are you up to this weekend?

January resolution - check

Our church is reading the Bible in a year, and I thought an appropriate January goal was to stick to that schedule.  I'm excited to say it was a success.

Every day gets a check mark (sadly no stickers).  The numbers (in case you were wondering) are for location numbers on the Kindle so I can switch back and forth between the Psalms and other reading more easily.  It was easy to stick with because I committed to doing it first thing in the morning when there isn't any competition for my time, and because it just doesn't take that long to do the daily reading.  15 - 20 minutes tops.

I've been kicking around a few ideas for my February resolution.  I thought I wanted to do something to try to increase my flexibility, but I didn't want to commit to something that would require a new commitment of time- especially after work- because I'm really really really bad at committing to do things in the evening.  I also didn't want to do anything to wreck the success of my January resolution.

So... I decided to combine the two.  I'm going to do my reading sitting in three different poses that are targeted to stretch the hips and calves/ ankles:

Hero pose:

Lotus:

  (Both taken from Yoga Journal)

Full squat:

All of these are insanely hard/ impossible for me right now, but I'm hoping I'll see improvement by the end of the month.

On the menu: Chicken tikka masala (kind of) with the leftover dark meat from our chicken.

I work out: OMG- yesterday I ran... outside... in shorts!  It was glorious.

Bible: Ancient Israel was gross.