Thursday March 30, 2006 6:30 am Ballina NSW

A. Morning Musings

6:30 am The coffee is in the plunger and the books are in their boxes. My next task is to ensure that I am keeping enough books back to last me until we are ready to leave.

Preparing my books for shipping is a sobering experience. The sobriety comes from realizing what I have purchased but not read. I must get better control of this. The first box is ready. It contains only 9 books, but they are among my heaviest. Two of the books are cookbooks.

This is a reminder of my earlier desire to prepare at least one new dish each week. That brings up the issue of fitness and weight. Not having a scale, I am not sure of my weight at the moment, but feel pretty sure it has gone up a bit. I have also stopped regular walks and exercise during the last two months. All of this is not good. Part of the difficulty is my lack of a feedback mechanism. I have software for monitoring my diet (FitDay) and it is easy to set up an Excel spreadsheet for monitoring my exercise, but that still leaves the problem of not getting an objective measure of the effect on my weight since I do not have a scale. This is not an excuse. Faith is a good substitute. If I know that I am exercising and eating in moderation, the weight should take care of itself. The exercise routines need some improvement though. The bicycle routine alone did not seem to make any noticeable difference when I was doing it earlier this year. I suspect I need to add a few upper body routines and turn it into a 30 minute workout at least 3 times a week.

I had to get on google for a minute to remind myself of the conversion factor between calories and kilojoules (1 calorie = 4.2 kilojoules). I have now added the muesli I am eating for breakfast to my FitDay software.

Chores: return towels, bedding and patio table set to Lismore

Literature: Continue reading Roald Dahl's "The Complete Short Stories".

C. Actual

5:20 PM We are making excellent progress on getting ready for our next visit here. We now have confirmed arrangements for taking care of our car. The only remaining task is to give the RTA our Australian mailing address.

I have just finished reading "The Collected Stories of Roald Dahl". They were superb. He truly is a master of the unexpected and the twisted tale.

I have updated my eating files and am currently sitting at 1300 calories, which is less than I was expecting. But I have not yet done any walking or exercise.

D. Reflection