busy busy busy

The last week or two have been so busy, no time to blog!
I went to Boston... well, Medway anyhow, for the weekend for Melissa's 30th birthday. Very fun and exciting and filled with shopping and general eating of crap. Seriously, I do not have the ability to not eat things that are in front of me. Especially when they are that most wonderful treat of salted peanuts mixed with M&Ms, of which I think I ate about 12 pounds of. And ice cream sundaes immediately before bed, on more than one occasion.
I did not have any issues at all with USAir, so I have nothing to complain about. Which is too bad because we know how I love to complain. The only problem that I did have is that my iPod froze up, which has never happened to me before. I am a little bit of an obsessive music listener and must have a constant soundtrack in my life. Especially when in a boring place such as an airplane with a loud crying child behind me. I had to let the battery run down, which sucked because I wasn't able to find my wall charger before I left. This problem was solved by buying a car charger, which I kind of secretly wanted anyhow, as I just bought myself an iTrip (which broadcasts my iPod onto an empty radio station so that I can listen to it in the car). Then I was also able to charge the iPod in Matt and Mel's super ugly Honda Element.

I did try to surprise Melissa with this trip. In fact, Matt and I had an elaborate cell phone ruse that we tried in the car on the way home from the airport, which was almost tragically cut short by the fact that my cell phone seems to hold a charge for about 10 seconds, and was almost dead. I called Mel to 'chat' and Matt called her while I was on the phone with her to ask if she wanted him to bring anything home for dinner? I tried to maintain the charade while we were walking in the door, but of course Mel is COMPLETELY unsurprisable and watched me walking up the front walk, not surprised at all. She said mildly 'You're right out front' or something completely unsurprised like that. This is not the first time that Matt has arranged a surprise for Mel that I've been involved in, and this is also not the first time that she's been completely and utterly on to us. Oh well. Surprise or not, it was fun and I'm glad I could be there for the ascendancy into the 30s!

Almost immediately upon my return I attended an epigenetics meeting that thankfully was local. It was good, and mostly I just got to see some people from the old lab and from my PhD science-life. Also, there were some painfully bad graphs included in some of the talks, so I was happy to see Karl's recent post about bad graphs. It is sad when potentially interesting data is rendered completely incomprehensible by Microsoft Excel. And it happens a lot. And I won't even start on people's PowerPoint faux pas. I have very definate ideas about what makes a good slide and what makes a bad slide. Number 1: TOO MANY WORDS.

On Saturday I attended a Weight Watchers meeting with a friend from work. I had been taking Paxil for about a year to control my irritable bowel. It worked MIRACULOUSLY for that, but even though I was taking a very low dose, I did not escape the Paxil weight gain. After some reading on the internets I saw that the average person on Paxil gains 20 lbs. For me it was closer to 30 over the last year. Add that to the 10 pounds I gained in the selling house and moving frenzy of a few years ago, and you've got one big porker (Granted, I cannot blame this ALL on Paxil. Towards the end, I would be eating my pizza or whatever and literally think to myself, 'What the hell. I'll have another piece. I'm already fat!'). Because of that, I decided to stop taking it (for better or worse), so I stopped about 3 weeks ago. I did try going to the gym for a while, but it didn't seem to make a huge difference. Those of you who have known me for a while know that I was quite successful with WW once before, I lost 30 lbs in the year prior to my wedding and kept the vast majority of it off for several years. So I decided to go back again. I'm a lifetime member now (because I hit my goal weight before and stayed there) so I don't have to pay inititation fees etc. I did fine the first week, stayed the same the second week, and this Saturday gained 3.6 pounds (well, that was a 2 week total gain) after the party weekend and the ten million fun size Milky Way bars that I was completely incapable of not eating. Hurrah!!

So now I have to get back on the stick. And primarily I have to cut way down on the drinking. Too many of my points are spent on wine, which is not always accurately accounted for. Also, once I've had a glass or two I become more likely to eat those Milky Ways or whatever. I thought also I would mention my progress in the blog occasionally, so that I am accountable to someone other than me and my Weight Watchers book.

Other than that, not too much else going on. I got my hardback bound copies of my dissertation, which is cool. I wrote a book!!