Thursday October 05, 2006 6:10 am Lethbridge Sunrise 7:37 Sunset 19:02 Hours of daylight: 11:25

A. Morning Musings

6:10 am It is +2 C at the moment with a forecast of + 20 C.

My weight is down 1 and I am back at 186. This is my second time at this, my lowest level, so far. Now to make sure that I stay here or go down rather than up. I have hit a bit of a plateau: only a loss of one pound in the last 5 days. Reviewing my graph:

The red line is the target where I am aiming for 180 by the middle of November. Ignoring the drop of 4 pounds during the first two days, the slope of my actual decline is very close to that of the red line. This graph is my primary feedback for monitoring my progress. The other graph of interest is one that shows my daily calorie consumption.

Obtaining this graph is pretty slick. It is created in Windows xp which is operational using the Parallels software. While the screen is showing a Windows image I switch to OS X and use Grab to obtain a screen capture in TIFF format and save it. I then use Preview to convert the file to JPG format and then use Dreamweaver to display it on this page.

It is apparent that I should try to aim for a value of close to 1500 for weight loss to occur. Values of under 1000 are not sustainable but they do help one lose a pound or two. Values close to 2000 are more likely for a form of steady state to occur. Clearly it is much easier to maintain a weight than it is to lose weight. Yesterday's two walks (total time of 2 hours, including 20 minutes of steady uphill walking) only added 500 calories to my calories burned. It is much easier to simply reduce one's intake by 500 calories. However one must maintain adequate nutrition as well. The other obvious advantage of walking is related to fitness, which does not appear on these graphs. Ice skating would be an excellent calorie burner. I must begin this.

From rear window	South patio
Both images taken at 11:40 am

B. Plan

Immediate
Health	Walk & exercise	2 hr
Chores	Paint new bathroom vanity cabinet	1 hr
Model Trains	Continue wiring outer mainline	1 hr
Puzzles	The Orange Puzzle Cube: puzzle #9
Technology	add keywords to iPhoto records	1 hr
Birds	Add September birds to North American data base	1 hr
History	Continue reading "Citizens"	1 hr
Literature	Continue reading "The Custodian of Paradise" by Wayne Johnston	1 hr
Later
Chores	Investigate water softeners for home
Technology	Read manual for cell phone
	Make notes for chap. 4 of "Switching to the Mac"
	Begin reading "iPhoto"
	digital photography - learn about using the various manual settings
Literature	Read "The Art of Living" by Epictetus
	Read "The Song of Roland"
Mathematics	Larson "Calculus"
	Read "The Computational Beauty of Nature" Chap 3
	Gardner "The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles"
History	Watson "Ideas"
Model Trains	Build oil refinery diorama: add ground cover
	Assemble second oil platform kit

C. Actual/Notes

D. Reflection