Hump Day

It was a good thing I skipped dance class last night. My stomach was SO not happy (though I'm glad it was just a minor bug, and nothing like what's hit co-workers and co-workers kids and dance class friends). Brian's still sick but feeling better, so the good thing is that what's hitting us is moving along quickly.

I started flipping through the most recent Self Magazine last night, and I'm considering doing the http://www.self.com/challenge/ again this year. It will be more of a challenge than in past years, because I'm not going to the gym anymore. I think it may be a good thing to kick Brian and I in our collective butts.

Along the lines of healthy eating, I'm hitting the supermarket today. We are in dire need of groceries (we ordered a pizza last night, and I was able to scrounge up enough stuff for today's breakfast and lunch at work that my sensitive stomach would be OK with, but it was tough). We'll be around the house a good deal this weekend (Brian is on call), so I'm hoping we can cook some interesting, healthy things up to have around the house for next week. After a crappy Monday and Tuesday I'm quite happy to have a more mundane, simple second half of the week and weekend!

When I was heading to the highway this morning I noticed how pretty the snow looked around the DeVincent houses, right near the Lyman Estate and heading up from Main to the Beaver Street Rotary. There are a good deal of trees along both sides of the road (near Gardencrest), and they were blanketed with snow as was the large lawn to the right in front of the Lyman house. These are the moments that remind me why I love New England, despite its erratic, cold and sometimes messy weather.

They also serve to remind me of the neat historic sites in and around my hometown that I've never seen (we had our wedding reception at The Paine Estate, finally saw the inside of the Gore Estate last year, though I used to get drunk on the grounds near the grape trellis' with my friends, and hopefully this year I'll get into the Lyman Estate). There's also countless things in Newton and Lexington that I've never seen that would be cool to explore this year once the weather gets better. I really want to hit the Museum of our Natural Heritage. There is (or was) an exhibit in there on old advertising that's actually got a video or photo of my old dance teacher as an anonymous set of legs dancing under an Old Gold Cigarette Box. She accompanied a student to the auditions for the commercial and was asked to dance in the larger box while her student was put into the small one. She was 8 months pregnant at the time: http://www.tvacres.com/dance_butts.htm http://www.tvacres.com/dance_butts.htm

We Got Fired and Its the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us

I just finished reading this book. My Dad has a thing for self help books and usually buys one each year for Christmas for us kids. This is the most recent one, and I decided to give it a try.

I agree with some of the comments others posted on Amazon.com about the book. Though the concepts are very good and useful, its not something you couldn't hear from another source. When I was laid off from THP they provided an outplacement service that conducted group training and discussion for us all in the remainder of that week (I was let go on a Tuesday, so it was a 3 day 9-5 workshop). Most of these concepts were emphasized there, though I'm sure a lot of people haven't had the benefit of this kind of experience or material (they'd really benefit from this book).

Its definitely inspiring reading about the low beginnings and/or challenges that a lot of famous and successful people of today had earlier in their careers. Though the chapters are brief, and I'm not nuts about the writing style (I just can't picture the people in the book talking to the author the way he quotes it), I think there is definitely something to gain even from just skimming the book and looking at the bullet points and catch phrases listed in summary at the end of each chapter.