Reptile?

It's a nice relaxing weekend this weekend, mostly because I cleaned like a fiend last weekend. This weekend, I'm doing not much, which is my favorite type of weekend.

Why do I have a picture of a reptiles on this post?  I'm kind of half seriously considering getting a bearded dragon for a pet.  The last two times I've been in the pet store getting cat stuff, I've been kind of captivated by the small, juvenile bearded dragons.  They look somewhat like the horny toads we used to play with when I was a kid, so some of the attraction is nostalgia.  I've always liked horny toads, as you can probably tell from the picture of the baby I came across that stays on this blog.  

The deal is, it's a pretty serious commitment to take one on, especially a baby like this.  As you can tell from the picture farther down in the post, they can get quite large if they live long enough.  At any age they require good care, but when they're little and growing fast . . . well let's just say I'm not going to do it unless I'm prepared to give it the care it needs.  Still . . . the one little guy in that pet store cage was hard to resist.  So I'm considering it.  I'll let you know if I succumb to temptation.

Right now it's too damn cold.  Since I'll have to buy the whole set-up (terrarium, heat lamps, etc, etc) the poor little thing would be frozen before I got it home and set up.  I'm seriously over the really cold temps, and yet it's still only January.  Spoiled much?  But it's high 70s one day and then mid-30s the next day, with night temperatures dipping into the low 20s.  I don't like 20s.  And I definitely don't like teens.  I suppose I should be grateful I live in a part of the country that gets days in the 70s during the winter instead of complaining about the days of low temperatures.  But we've had a lot of really low temps this year.  I covered the remains of the 2 outside aloe vera again the last three nights, but I'm not holding out much hope for them.  And even though it's supposed to be nice today and tomorrow, it's supposed drop below freezing again Monday and through next week.  

As soon as we get a decent temp day on the weekend, I'm going to go out a whack my roses back to nubs.  I'm tired of the long stringy look.  And they say February 14th is the date to try to prune your roses, so it's about time.   Valentine's Day makes it easy to remember to cut back the roses then.   I should do some more outside work, like replace all the foundation-killed shrubbery, but that will have to wait until it's much more Spring-like outside.  Which makes me think - I need to grow another batch of grass for the cat-kids.

Most of the sparrows have disappeared, so the bird-feeders are not needing to be filled anywhere near as often.  Now days I see the ubiquitous morning doves, a few dark-eyed juncos and four or five house finches.  The male house finches are pretty and red right now.  I put out another feeder that holds sunflower seeds rather than the mixed seed.  The finches like both ad frequent both feeders.  The sparrows pretty much stuck with the mixed seed.       

My garage door opener broke again.  It's functioning is definitely related to the outside temperature.  When the temps are around or below freezing, it doesn't work.  I've fixed it twice now and the house repair guys fixed it once, and each time the next time it was freezing outside, the opener broke again.  I suppose I'll have to resort to calling a professional to fix it.  That or get up on a ladder and see if I can tell what the problem is.  Or both.

Anyway, I guess that's about all for today.

Done! House completely done!

Here we are more than half way through January, and I’m just getting around to blogging.  Busy, busy.

I’m in a pretty good mood these days and the primary reason for that is that I like my house again.  In fact, I really like my house again.  I haven’t liked my house since last August, before I realized I was going to have to have serious foundation work done.  I’ve been pretty bummed out about it since then, through all the foundation repairs and slab leak repairs, and before Christmas I got a quote for the interior repairs.  I thought the quote was too high, so I just blew it off until after the Holidays – trying to pretend the work didn’t need to be done.

Last week the people who made the quote contacted me about whether I wanted to proceed, and I thought what the hell, might as well get it over with.  OMG, OMG.  My house looks sooooooooo good.  The last two weeks they’ve been here doing the repairs.  It took them two weeks basically because of the extent of the repairs, but also because they first did everything except the master bedroom/bathroom where the cats were closed in and hiding out.  Then I moved the cats and they finished the master area.  It’s all gorgeous.  They not only have repaired the cracks, they’ve repaired areas that the painters I hired a year and a half ago screwed up.  I didn’t even realize those areas were bothering me until I saw them repaired, re-textured and with new paint.  The people doing the work are meticulous and obviously proud of the job they do.  The place just looks gorgeous and I’m incredibly happy with their work and once again really liking my new house.   Sometimes you do get what you pay for.   On top of that, they fixed my garage door opener which broke when the door froze shut in the ice storm we had.  On top of that, they’re neat.  They cleaned up each day before they left, but they really cleaned up the house before leaving on Friday afternoon so I didn’t spend the weekend between their two work weeks in a disaster area.  *happy sigh*   Really, really happy with the job they did.  In case you couldn’t tell.

A week or so ago I also learned how to give subcutaneous fluids to my elderly cat, Addy.    Needless to say, even shut in the master areas, the workers and noise in the house stresses the cat kids out.  They’ve both been off their food somewhat, and Addy can’t afford to not eat and drink.  Wednesday last week I thought she looked dehydrated and took her to the vet.  They agreed with me and showed me how to give her subcutaneous fluids, and sent me home with supplies if I need to give her fluids at home.  More importantly, they gave me ideas on how to get more fluids into her without the sub-cutaneous fluids, like adding water to her food.   Luckily I haven’t had to give her any fluids since then, but it’s nice to know I can if I need to.

The cat-kids did NOT like being shut in the front bedroom those days the workers were working on the master area.  Getting them in there the first day turned out to be freakishly easy.  I had just finished putting food and water in there and Zoe wandered in and began eating.  (Even though she’d just had wet food, she can always eat).   So I went and got Addy, put her in and closed the door.   Easy as that.  The next two days were not so easy since the cats wised up to me.  Zoe hates to be picked up, and when she spazzes out, Addy runs for hiding and then they’re both a hassle.  

I had lunch a week ago with my sister, nephew and niece-in-law.  My nephew and niece-in-law are super excited (dancing in place excited) because they’re expecting twins.  These are their first kids and she’s just past her first trimester – due around the end of July.   They are so cute about it all.  And are already agonizing over names.  They’re also hoping for a boy and a girl, and should be able to tell that at the next sonogram.

A funny workers story:  I had this white stove on my back patio that the previous owners of the house had left there.  I had just not gotten around to having something done with it (Hey, it’s only been a year and a half.  I’m a world class procrastinator!)  So the last day the workers were here, I told them if they knew anyone who wanted it they could have it and they said they’d take it off my hands.  I was puttering around the house as they were getting ready to leave and all of a sudden I hear yelling on my back patio.  I looked out there, and the head worker was laughing so hard, he could barely stand up.  They eventually got the stove loaded and when they checked in to say goodbye I asked what happened.  When they picked the stove up, a family of rats came out of it!  Four or 5 rats!  He said his workers were dancing around the fleeing rats and yelling.  Man.  I’m glad the stove is gone, and glad I didn’t know rats were nesting in it.  I haven’t seen any of those sneaky little things since early last September. 

As you can see from the pictures, I had to resort to bringing the aloe vera in to save them.  There are two more on my back patio still that I waited too late to save.  We have just had too long of spells of cold weather.  They can survive a day or two of sub-freezing temperatures, but we’ve had a good week a couple of times where the temp dropped below freezing every night and didn’t get very high during the day.  So 4 of my 6 pots will be in the house until it stops freezing. 

Another reason I’m in a good mood is that my weight is right where I want it now, and I just got blood work back that my total cholesterol is 160.  160!  It hasn’t been that low in 30 years.  So my current food intake seems to be fairly good for me, as well as keeping my weight at this point.  I’m feeling healthy these days and am nearly halfway through the INH treatment for LTBI.  Overall my health isn't an issue any more, unless you count the tinnitus and knee pain at night.  

 

This has been a three day weekend, and I’ve spent it cleaning.  Now that all the work is done on the house I’m motivated to clean it really well, so that’s what I’ve been doing.  New paint, no cracks and sparkly clean.  I’m liking the place a lot these days.  Ooh!  Just looked up and realized I need to clean the ceiling fans.  Okay.  Onward.    

New Year's Eve 2013

Today is New Year’s Eve 2013.  I’m going to try to write my usual New Year’s Eve blog post. This is usually a retrospective look at what my year has been like.  Today, I’m starting a little early because I’m trying out my new Dragon Naturally Speaking software which types what I’m saying.  I think this software is smarter than I am.  I can see it’s going to take a little bit of work to figure out how to use it easily.

Okay. Today is a really gorgeous day outside, if a little bit cold. Anyway it’s cold for me since I’m a Texas girl.  I’m on vacation right now, sort of.  I’m taking these two weeks over the Holidays off, but I’ve been going in to work to sign out test results.  It takes about an hour out of my day which isn’t too bad.  Other than that, I’ve been puttering around the house doing small chores and basically doing whatever I want.  Still, I was hoping to get some yard work done in these two weeks and I haven’t been able to because I really don’t like the cold.  I think that I would’ve been happier with this stay-cation if I had been a little more productive during it.  I did manage to do a lot of reading and other things that I just wanted to do, but I hate to say it . . . it feels a little bit like I’ve wasted this time. Which it shouldn’t, because it’s a vacation after all.  I suppose I need to stop feeling guilty.  

I do want to do my annual retrospective of the year, and I am going to try doing it with this software program because it’s kind of fun to play with.  It’s really an incredibly smart program. And its spelling is a whole lot better than mine is.  I’ll be really interested to see how it handles anime-related spelling, when I use this to write my anime blog.  *Laughing*  I just trained it to use the word 'anime'.  It really is a pretty smart program.  I may have a hard time doing my retrospective because I’m having so much fun playing with this program.

This is been a long and hard year for me.  The biggest thing probably is that my health has been an issue, which is a little ironic considering that I started off the year decided to pay more attention to my health.  Good news first: I ended up 18 pounds lighter than I started the year which is great.  And my diet is a whole lot better than it was at the start of the year.  I’m eating things like fruit and yogurt and I’m not eating fast food, or not very much.  I’m also not drinking Coke.  So from that perspective I’m in pretty good shape.  The bad news: I did end up getting TB this year, although luckily just latent TB.   I’m currently slightly less than halfway through the treatment for that.  I also had four bad colds this year, but I haven’t had any since I began the TB treatment which was in September.  So I have to say that although my health has been an issue, it’s basically looking pretty good right now.

The other part of this year that’s been hard for me is all the work that has had to be done on my house.  Beginning in September I had foundation repair done which was pretty expensive and extensive, followed by repair to my plumbing in the slab (ditto on the expensive/extensive), and now I need interior work done on the house to repair the damage done by the foundation issues. Yes, this all started in September and I still need to get the interior work done. It’s been a long and depressing Fall.

On top of the house and health issues, I also ran for office in my national organization and didn’t win. It’s actually the first election with them that I’ve run in and NOT won. That kind of hurt my feelings, although it’s silly because my opponent deserved to win just as much as I did.  It kind of felt like typical of how my luck has run this year though.

In all fairness, there have been good things about 2013 also. Even though both my parents had bad enough health issues this last summer that we thought we would lose my mother, both of them are doing incredibly well right now. That’s something that I’m amazingly grateful for.  I’m just so grateful for having been able to spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with my parents when last August I wasn’t sure I would be able to spend any more holidays with them at all.  Also my current state of health is a pretty good thing.  And I did get to take a 10 day vacation to Japan in May with my friend. That trip created some memories that I’ll be remembering fondly for a long time.

So basically, I’m really glad to be getting out of 2013. This year has had some really high and really low emotional swings and has been an expensive year.  Overall it’s been pretty good to me, since I have a stable job which I enjoy, I like the people I work with, and most importantly, my family is all well and mostly thriving.  Plus, now I'm fairly healthy myself and I can afford the house work.  Still, I’m ready to leave 2013 and start a new year.  Time to move on.

Pictures are of Zoe acting more like a cow than a cat.  She does love her cat grass.  And also of the little budgie.  He still shows up at my feeder randomly, so I guess he’s surviving so far.  

Hmmmm.  Last thing:  I should make some resolutions.  Okay, keep being healthy, including start exercising again, which I quit right before Thanksgiving.  Also . . . get the house work finished, and spend some time on keeping the place up, including doing some basic yardwork - like replacing the shrubbery killed by the repair people.  Lastly:  I failed miserably to get my finances under control (one of my 2013 resolutions).  Partly that was the house.  Plus when you lose 20 pounds, your clothes no longer fit, so I had to update my wardrobe.  So my third resolution again this year will be to take a stab at controlling the spending.  

I guess that's pretty much it.  Oh!  I quit using the speaking software about 2 paragraphs back.  Not too shabby.   

Ice storm

That's the big news around here this week of course.  The ice storm.  I'm posting some pictures of ice-covered trees and the poor doves, who are congregated around my bird feeders and all puffed out from the cold.  Interestingly, some of the mourning doves have a definite pink tinge to their breasts and above their beaks.  You can kind of see it in the picture below.  And there's one white-winged dove out there too (pictured walking by himself). 

The ice storm came in Thursday evening.  I was driving home from a dinner with a speaker when it was beginning and the bridges were already starting to freeze.  I stayed home Friday, which is unusual for me.  I have an all-wheel-drive Subaru, so I usually go to work, but I just wasn't ready to face it Friday.  So I worked from home (thank you remote access!) and took pictures of icy things.

Unfortunately yesterday I had to get out in it.  I had committed to interview medical school applicants on Saturday and the applicants got here.  So I left my house about 3 hours before I had to be there, and it took me about an hour to get into work.  I really thought I was going to die at one point though.  

About 5 other cars and I were inching our way across the Trinity River over a five lane bridge that was horrific.  Refrozen into slippery 4 inch deep ruts that threw your car around besides the basic slipping.  We were probably all going less than 5 mph, maybe 2-3 mph, but we were inching our way across.  I looked up into my rear view mirror and there's a semi barreling down on us, doing at least 50 mph.  I thought, well that's it.  Nowhere to go.  No way to get there even if there was.  No way was he going to be able to stop.  I didn't even get an adrenaline surge, maybe because I thought it was inevitable and there was nothing to do.  

The semi moron (well total moron, but driving a semi) whipped into the nonexistent left hand lane and flew past us all.  Really I had forgotten about that lane because it was iced over so badly, nobody was even trying to drive in it.  If there had been anyone in that lane, or if he hadn't controlled it on that ice, none of us probably would have escaped being involved in the wreck.  That was by far my scariest moment of the day, going in.

Coming back had some nerve-wracking moments, but nothing like that one.  It also took me longer (almost 1 1/2 hours) because my way home usually involves some long, high ramps.  I went alternate routes in order to miss those, and then secondary alternate routes from my alternate routes when the alternate routes were blocked off as impassible (long steep hills).  I was just glad to finally get home.  Even if my garage door opener was frozen and I had to get out and open it by hand.  

This morning I fell on the ice going to get my mail.  Not serious.  Bruised knees probably.  Have I mentioned that I'm not that fond of ice?  The good news is that even though the sun hasn't shown itself since last Wednesday some time, it's slightly above freezing now.  A lot of this stuff is melting.  I have a small rainstorm coming off my roof.  Of course it will freeze back up tonight, but any little thaw makes the roads somewhat more passable for tomorrow.  

And the cat kids and I are staying in and staying warm today, although Zoe would like a chance at the dove congregation, as you can see.  And I have every faucet in my house dripping for the duration.  I'll shoot myself if I have any frozen and broken pipes.


In other news, my big laptop has blue screened 4 times in the last day, despite everything I've done to try to fix it, so it's packed up to go back to Fry's for some work.  I pulled my receipt on it.  I bought it in July 2011, with a 3 year service/warranty contract.  Must have been psychic.  So I'm on the Internet on my small travel laptop today.

I suppose that's it for today.  I'll save other news for the next post.  Later.

Slab leak repair

Little did I realize that I was being prophetic when my last thought on the last blog post was that it was probably going to be a long week.  It was a loooooong week. 

The pictures show some stages of the work they did, including the trail in the front door and into that bedroom.  They covered the wood and tile floor, so that they could take all the old cement and dirt out that they dug out, and then they put it down again when they got ready to put all the dirt back and re-cement.  I had 5 gallon buckets of dirt lined up along my driveway all week waiting to go back into that hole in the bedroom floor.  I didn't take any pictures when it was a deep hole.  And I didn't take any pictures of the holes outside.  So this is just the inside hole when it had been filled back in, getting ready to cement it, and then the new cement in the hole.  In both those pictures you can see the carpet and carpet pad pulled back out of the way.

They actually finished repairing the leaky pipes on Tuesday evening, so we all thought they would be through on Wednesday after the City inspected it.  But due to some sort of snafu (with nobody claiming responsibility), the City inspector never showed up on Wednesday!  So they rescheduled and he showed up about noon on Thursday.  That means they didn't get everything filled back in and fixed on Thursday and had to come back on Friday and finish.   Not only did I take Monday off work, I didn't get in to work until between 9:00 - 10:00 am every morning the rest of the week, due to having to wait and let the workers in to the house every morning.  Considering I usually get to work at 6:00 am, it was a badly disrupted week.   And that doesn't even count that the cats had to be shut in the master bedroom all week with food and a cat box.  

I suppose I should be counting my blessings.  They in fact did NOT have to destroy my bathroom floor to reach that back leak.  They also didn't break any post-tension cables in my foundation when they jack-hammered through.  The piece of rebar you see in the picture, they just placed in there to help hold the new cement.  The post-tension cable runs below it and perpendicular to it.  However, they did go "overtime" though, taking longer to get done than the estimate they supplied me with.  So of course "overtime" is billed at an hourly rate and the grand total was significantly more than the estimate.  Funny how that always happens, isn't it?  No, no, of course I'm not cynical when it comes to anything construction-related.  Just because I've NEVER seen a construction-type job done on schedule, doesn't make me cynical.  

*sigh*  Just the way the world works, I guess.  Now I'm down to the last stage - getting the damage to the walls and ceilings caused by the foundation issues repaired.  I'm kind of hoping I can be finished with this by the end of the year.

The last week or so I've begun seeing birds other than the sparrows and doves at my feeders.   The weather took a cold turn, so I guess it's time.  The juncos are back.  Thursday morning when I was here waiting on the plumbing guys, there was a small blue-gray parakeet (budgie) out there!  I haven't seen him since, but he must have escaped from someone, or they decided they didn't want him and let him go.  Poor thing.  It's pretty cold for him, and it's not like he's camouflaged, or used to fending for himself in the wild, so I don't suppose he stands much chance out there.

We're supposed to have freezing precipitation tonight and tomorrow morning.  I'm hoping we run true to form.  Usually when they forecast it like this, it doesn't happen.  It comes when we're not expecting it.  So I'm hoping since they forecast it, it won't really happen.  I had such a broken up week last week, I'd kind of like to get to work tomorrow.    I pulled all my aloe vera up against the house and covered them.  It's supposed to freeze every night until around Wednesday, so I hope they stay warm enough in this protected area.  I know the doves have been hanging out in this area, all puffed up against the cold.

Looks like I didn't knock on wood quite fast enough about the INH.  I've begun having some abdominal pain, which is most likely due to that drug.  Luckily it's not too severe.  Kind of like an ulcer pain, it feels best right after I've eaten, which is a problem since, besides watching my food intake these days, INH is supposed to be taken on an empty stomach.  Too bad about that.  It's going to be taken with food.  And I'm going to have to find a happy medium between keeping my belly full of food and feeling unacceptable pain.   

Anyway, that's it for this post.  Later.

Jack hammer headache

Actually, I don't have a jack hammer headache yet, but it's probably just a matter of time.  Today I'm at home since they began work to repair my slab plumbing leaks.  They're currently jack-hammering through the slab foundation in the front bedroom to reach one leak and attempting to reach the second leak by digging under the house from the outside.  I'm praying they can reach it that way and not have to jack-hammer through the bathroom floor in the back of the house in the master bathroom too.  If they do have to go through that bathroom floor, I'll have to move the cats to the garage.  They are currently hiding in the closet back there.

This is a messy, disruptive, NOISY process.  I was going to see that they got started and then go into work.  But since they don't know yet whether I'll need to move the cats to the garage, I decided to take the day off and stay here, both to monitor and reassure the cats and to follow the worker's progress - and move the cats if necessary. 

It's hard to watch someone tear up your house though.

The picture in this post is the two gigantic, ancient cottonwoods at Capital Reef National Park.  I'm seriously wishing I were there. 

There's now a hole in my bedroom floor, about 2 1/2 feet in diameter and 4+ feet deep, going through the foundation and into the soil underneath. He says he's gotten TO the pipe now, just needs to clear around it to be able to cut the bad section out and replace it with a new section.   Don't know how the outside work is progressing.   

Just a minor time lapse here.  I started this this morning, and it's quitting time.  The guys have left for the day.  They say they have about 2 - 4 hours digging time left in both holes, outside and inside before they can make the repairs.  They're still not 100% sure they won't have to go through my bathroom floor and foundation to reach the leak there, but it doesn't look like it right now.   And they still have to dig to the leak in my front yard and repair that.  Then once everything's repaired, the City of Arlington has to come out and inspect it before they can fill in all the holes and repair the foundation hole.  So probably at least two more days work.  *sigh*   When they're finally done, I'll be able to get all the damage to the house fixed. That's what I'm really looking forward to.

The cats are out of hiding now, but I've had them shut in the master bedroom/bathroom all day.  I've been working from home, ignoring the work guys here as much as possible.  Tomorrow I'm going to get them started and go into work, leaving the cats shut up again.  Now that I know what to expect of the work I don't feel so uncomfortable doing that.  Plus they should be done jack hammering. 

Anyway I'm guessing it's going to be a long week.  I'll be glad when it's done. 

Cracks & Calories

Here I am, wide awake at 5:00 am on a Sunday.  That's not particularly unusual for me.  The problem is that today that's 4:00 am since last night was Fall Back.  Maybe I'll take a nap this afternoon.

I thought I'd post a couple pictures of some of the foundation-related cracks in my house.   This is the ceiling in my master bathroom.  Not only is the ceiling cracked, but it goes down that corner and cracks the grout at the top of the shower stall.  And in the second picture you can kind of see that the cracks extend across the whole bathroom ceiling.  The third picture is the corner of the window in the sun room.  It's hard to wait 2 - 3 months for the house to finish settling to get them repaired.  Considering that the slab leak repairs will probably cause more damage needing repair, it's probably just as well to wait and have everything repaired together though.  I currently have a two page list of everything that needs to be repaired.  Now I just need to decide whether to have the repairs done in December or wait until after the holidays.  I'm leaning toward December, but we'll see.

I gave up on those little pine trees I was growing.  I have SUCH a brown thumb.  No matter what I've tried, they continue to seem to be dying.  Give them more water, give them less water, re-pot them (twice!).  The needles keep turning yellow, then brown and that's spreading up the little trees.   So this week I put them outside.  They're pine trees, so they should be able to live outside, and I figured if they're going to live at all, their chances are better out in the elements, than under my tender loving care.   Poor things.  It it weren't for cacti and wandering jews, I suspect I couldn't grow any plants at all.    

I did plant the three remaining peach tree seedlings out into the yard.  The oldest one was looking pretty bad, so we'll see if being planted in the ground will allow it to survive.  The other two seem happy enough.  I won't believe in their overall survival until they leaf out next Spring though.  I haven't replaced any of the shrubbery that died from the foundation work yet.  I figured I'd wait until the slab leak guys finish digging up the place and then replace everything that needs it.  

I haven't been able to go nine months without drinking alcohol.  *laughing*  I sound like an alcoholic, but I'm not.  I'm not even much of a drinker - basically never drink at home - but when I'm out socially, I do like an occasional drink.  So since I've been lucky enough to have zero side effects from the INH (TB drug) I'm taking, I have had three drinks now since the first week in September.  Two half glasses of wine and one beer.  I'm counting on my liver to be able to handle that much alcohol along with the INH, but I'm not going to push it much more than that.  After November, I won't be traveling for work much for several months, so I won't be in those social occasions where I most like to have a drink.    

I am traveling the next two weeks though.  A BOD meeting in Washington DC next week, then I'm going to give a talk in Florida the following week.  Then the third week in November is when they're coming to fix my slab leaks.  Then Thanksgiving.  I think November is going to fly past even faster than the rest of the year has.  Which is scary, considering how fast the rest of the year has passed.

Besides the usual cohort of sparrows, I have a flock of 12 mourning doves under my bird feeders this morning.  I hung a second feeder out there because they were going through one feeder so fast.  The sparrows and doves are the only birds I'm seeing out there lately. And only the mourning doves - no white-winged doves.

I destroyed my diet yesterday by going out to eat with a friend.  It was worth it though.  I'll have to be extra good today to make up for some of those calories.  I'm really not very strict on this diet.  I don't pay much attention to what I eat except I've pretty much stopped eating any fast food, and don't drink cokes except very rarely.  Plus I began eating yogurt and fruit.  Other than that I just watch portion sizes and keep track of overall calories.  In June when I got serious about it, I set my calorie limit to 1400 per day.  In the month of June I averaged 1404 calories per day.  In July, I averaged 1356/day.  In August it was 1303/day.  September - 1233/day and October 1188/day.  So I've been steadily decreasing my calorie intake just by keeping track.

I have this cool little app on my phone called FatSecret Calorie Counter that lets me keep track easily of calorie intake and expenditure.  I need to stop decreasing my overall calories soon though or I won't be taking in enough to keep someone my size healthy.   


I guess that's about it for today.