Thursday January 12, 2006 7:10 am Ballina NSW

A. Morning Musings

7:10 am Early morning fog, but there is some sunshine among the clouds. As Phyllis commented yesterday, it is still hard to realize that we are in Australia again. Phyllis bought a cheap radio yesterday so we can listen to the ABC.

I slept in this morning, and am still a bit groggy this morning. I feel like a coffee, but will try to resist the urge. I also don't feel much like musing. I will move on to thinking about the Plan for the day. 7:20 am

7:45 am I am still operating on half a tank. I simply don't feel energized and ready to engage in anything serious or substantive. I may as well complete my morning tummy exercises. Then I will see what emerges... 7:50 am

B. Plan

7:20 am Tummy exercises and a beach walk will be early on the agenda. I want to try doing the tummy exericises both in the morning and early evening. I want to visit the fish shop at the "big pineapple" and see about some white fish filets for barbequeing. Phyllis wants to check out a discount shop nearby. I would like to find some rectangular stickers that I can put in the recipe books indicating the date that we tried the recipe and a one-word comment such as "good", "excellent", "bland", etc.

Thinking about Learning: Another good session with Stylus Studio would be a good idea. I have reviewed my web page "JanLearningActivities" and reinforced my intent to work on Stylus Studio. I need to make notes for chapter 7 of "The Story of the Stone". 7:45 am

C. Actual

7:55 am The tummy exercises went well. I can notice an improvement already - I was able to complete 3 reps of 50 for the bicycle exercise. That is one more rep than yesterday. 8:00 am

8:00 am I have decided to copy the Enya CD to the laptop. This is just a task that doesn't require any original thought or memory. Each day I Learn something new. After I copied the files to the computer I was able to use iTunes to use the Music Store to download all of the information on titles, artist and name of album. This certainly was an improvement over having to type the information in. 8:20 am

8:20 am I am still feeling that I only want to tackle simple tasks. Perhaps some breakfast will help. Then I will try making notes for chapter 7 of "The Story of the Stone". Done. Now for a beach walk. 9:30 am

11:40 am We are back from the first sunny beach walk in a week. It was most enjoyable. We saw some excellent surf riders on Shelly beach. Phyllis spotted a bird on the path up to the lookout at Lighthouse beach. I managed to take a few photos of it, and when we viewed them on the computer it was relatively easy to identify it as a Little Wattlebird. That is a new 'lifer' for us, and it is number 100 for Australia. A special moment in the day.

I used Canon's PhotoStudio to zoom in on the image and then "select" the part of the image I wanted to save. That worked very easily. I have added a few images to the last two web pages. They certainly add to the web page. I must at least try to take a few more pictures of "everyday" events to enrich these pages. 12:20 PM

5:10 PM I have just completed almost 2 hours with Stylus Studio and Section 4 Stylesheets That Generate HTML - Getting Started. Basically this was a very successful session. I was able to follow the steps in the example and then tried it out on my own XML file Ozbirds and was able to create a table and format the content.

D. Reflection

7:25 PM I am feeling very content and relaxed at the moment. I met all of the day's goals in a day that simply unfolded. At the moment I am sipping a lime-flavored glass of water in one of my favorite glasses.

Food. The evening meal turned out very well. I made a good decision to cook the fish in the "clean" electric fry pan rather than on the BBQ. I used a medium high heat and only cooked the fish on one side. By putting the lid on the top the cooking was a combination of frying and baking and this seemed a good way to ensure that the fish was properly cooked throughout. The real trick is simply having fresh fish! I am pleased with my increase in understanding of preparing meals. I have made 3 stir-fry meals (beef, pork, and chicken), and one seafood. Surprisingly, it is the barbeque meals that I am ignoring. I have just spent a few minutes reviewing the recipes in the Australian Woman's Weekly magazine Barbecue Meals in Minutes and have tentatively picked two: "Mustard and Thyme T-bone Steaks with Honey Sweet Potato and Kumara" [p. 19] and "Cajun Chicken with Pineapple Salsa" [p. 60]. No coffee and no alcohol today. Probably a first since arriving in late November.

Technology. I am pleased with the addition of the photos to the last couple of web pages and will try to have at least one every couple of days. Tomorrow I may try to scan the cover of a couple of books to add to this. One example might be "The Story of the Stone". Another might be the cover of one of my cookbooks. I would also like to finish the section on stylesheets that I began today.

Exercise. The beach walks and tummy exercises are both going well.

Literature. I made notes for chapter 7 this morning when I was alert and read chapter 8 this evening when I was more mellow. I am beginning to enjoy the novel as the main characters become more familiar to me.

Mathematics, History and Art are taking a break. Drawing has yet to begin. Fair enough.