Average Jane™

The Average Jane Improvement Program

I'm not sure why I haven't written about this, but I've been slowly forcing all of my worst lifestyle habits to the curb and making an effort to be healthier and leaner. I'm not saying there hasn't been some backsliding from time to time, but I believe I'm seeing and feeling results.

Here's some of what it all entails:

Exercise - I'm still taking yoga classes (I shoot for at least one per week) and I've put a mat, blocks and a belt in my living room where I can easily get at them when I feel the need to practice or stretch something.

I've also found a route through my neighborhood that's just a teensy bit more than 5k long and takes about an hour to walk at a moderately brisk pace. Earlier in the summer I was walking a couple of mornings each week with my friend LuAnn. Now I'm walking with A Librarian on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, even though it means getting up at the ghastly hour of 5:30 a.m.

Nutrition - After a couple of years of breakfasting on Power Bars, I've switched to meal replacement shakes. Not only are they nice and filling (in part because it usually takes me more than an hour to drink one), but the opportunities for variety are pretty much unlimited. My blender is getting a workout and I'm getting a lot more fruit and dairy protein now. It makes me feel noticeably more energetic.

I've also started taking multivitamins. Yes, I know that nutritionists say they aren't as good as eating nutrient-packed food, but I figure they can't hurt.

Finally, there is now only one kind of snack in the house: fresh fruit. At this point, I seriously think I would turn down a piece of chocolate cake in favor of a handful of cherries or a nectarine. It's amazing how quickly you can lose your taste for sweets.

Bad Habits - First of all, I quit drinking caffeine again. It was exacerbating a medical condition and I'd been reading a lot about how drinking coffee really only quells the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal and doesn't provide a true energy boost. It seemed kind of silly to spend so much to feed an addiction.

Second, it finally started to sink in that when I drink alcohol (which is, after all, poison), I almost always get a headache and feel kind of icky in general. Beer was the first to go and since then I've cut back on almost all alcoholic drinks. I'm still good with a glass of wine or a mixed drink from time to time, but most of the time I'd just as soon pass. Heck, I even gave away two of my four BlogHer conference drink tickets!

At the Office - I recently invested in a Gaiam Balance Ball Chair. My regular office chair is a high-quality Steelcase ergonomic chair, but I can still manage to slump and make myself thoroughly uncomfortable when I'm sitting in it. The balance ball chair forces me to have good posture, sit upright with both feet flat on the floor, and engage my core muscles. I think its true secret is that it forces me to regularly get up and walk around because I can only sit on it so long before I need to take a break and stretch a bit.

* * *

I still have a ways to go before I start seeing significant changes, but I can see that I'm slowly melting off some of the excess fat that I've been building up over the past few years. My wardrobe might not be a lost cause after all.

Does anyone have any tips to share? I'm willing to entertain any healthy idea as long as it's free.

Average Jane's Shiny, Happy Kitties

My cats have been eating their premium Nulo food since August 15th and they seem to really like it. They're both looking extra sleek and shiny and I swear Xena looks a little leaner even though the scale reports that she's picked up a couple of ounces. Velvet apparently has lost a couple of ounces, so there's that.

I have doubts about the scale. Theoretically, it should be accurate since I'm weighing myself holding a cat, weighing myself alone, and subtracting to find the difference. However, I suspect that my cheapo digital scale from the drug store is not as consistent as one would like a measuring device to be. However, it's all I have so I'm going to start weighing the cats daily so see if that makes a difference.

 

See, doesn't she look a little more trim than she did at the start, or is that just my imagination?

My husband and I have already decided that we're going to continue with the Nulo food even after the program ends - and also start feeding it to the upstairs cats then. We're impressed with the quality of the ingredients. The price, while slightly higher than some of the pet food store brands, is not at all unreasonable. Plus, we like the idea of having our cat food delivered to the house. (Anyone else get a Pets.com flashback just then?)

In an effort to up the exercise portion of the program, I think I'll take a couple of the studio cats' toys downstairs and see if Xena can be convinced to play a bit more. I'd think a string on a stick and a laser would get her stirred up enough to burn some extra calories.

If you're interested in following some of the other bloggers' pets' progress in this program (and would like to get pet nutrition tips and special offers), you can like Nulo on Facebook. They have an introductory 30% off special right now.

Disclosure: Nulo has generously provided free product and other benefits in exchange for my participation in the Nu Campaign to fight pet obesity. All of the opinions about the product are mine and not dictated in any way by the company.

Average Jane Gets Quieter

I quit my band a couple of weeks ago.

I didn't want to do it, but it had gotten to the point where every time we scheduled a practice, someone canceled at the absolute last minute. I was constantly pissed off that my time was being wasted because there was always something fun I'd had to cancel to leave the time open for practice and it was always too late to join in the fun thing by the time I found out there was no practice after all.

So I saw the writing on the wall and decided that the aggravation was not worth it.

I've decided that I'm going to take a break from singing for a little while. It will give me the opportunity to spend more time with my husband, do more writing, get things done around the house and hang out with my friends, some of whom are probably starting to forget that I exist.

I love to sing and perform, but I'm thinking that a better tack might be to channel my comfort in front of an audience into more speaking engagements. I may even join Toastmasters because my biggest flaw as a speaker is that I'm not very organized and tend to wing it too much.

I'm sure I'll eventually join another band, but it'll be nice to focus on other things for a while. In the meantime, who's up for some karaoke? (Not really.)

Nurse Average Jane

After putting off the whole ordeal for more than a year, my husband finally agreed to have his wisdom teeth out. Yes, he was supposed to have had them out in 2009, but he let it slide until they started to hurt again. Men.

So today was the big day. I left work early and took him to the oral surgeon's office where he was to be anesthetized for the extraction. I'd brought my laptop and some research to read so I could work on a project, but it turned out that the whole thing took less than 20 minutes.

When the nurse came out and pointed me to the recovery room, I discovered a very confused man. As I posted to Facebook, "Sitting with husband as he recovers from having his wisdom teeth out. He's like 'David After Dentist' crossed with Marlon Brando in The Godfather."

He kept saying, "I don't remember anything." Well, that was the point of the general anesthesia, now wasn't it?

Talking to him was a lot like talking to a person with Alzheimer's. He wasn't quite sure where he was and he kept asking me the same questions over and over.

I led him carefully out to the car and drove him home so he could nap while I picked up the prescriptions they'd given him. While I was at the store, I stocked up on soft foods: pudding, vanilla yogurt, soup, applesauce and some sugar-free juice for him to drink.

The whole "change the gauze every 20-30 minutes" thing fell by the wayside immediately because once he fell asleep, he was out for several hours. When he finally woke up, I was hoping to get some food into him, but his face and tongue were still numb even three-and-a-half hours after the procedure.

He's up and around now (watching a video podcast about recording, to be exact), but I still feel like I need to be around and baby him a bit, at least until he eats. In the meantime, I guess I'll get back to work.

Image Credit: Natalie Dee

Average Jane, Tourist

I arranged my trip to New York so I'd have some tourist time built in before and after the conference activities. When I got in on Thursday, the first order of business after checking into the hotel was to grab lunch, which I did with Cagey and Deb. Keith had recommended Heartland Brewery, so that's where we went. I had a very tasty hamburger, homemade fries and an incredibly hoppy IPA to drink.

 
After that, Cagey and I decided to walk up to Central Park, which was only a few blocks away. It was really warm out, so we weren't inclined to explore the park right then, but one thing got our attention on the way there:

This is Cagey with Dr. Jeckll outside the Jeckyll and Hyde Club. As soon as we saw the statues and the building's decorated facade, we were in instant agreement that - tourist trap or no - we had to stop there for a drink on the way back.

And so we did. We learned fairly quickly that we could avoid the "entertainment charge" by sitting at the bar, so we let the bartender choose one of the specialty drinks for us. We were served something fruity, very rum-heavy and delicious. Neither one of us can remember what the drink was called, and for that we blame the drink itself.

After I tweeted a photo of where we were, my friend @socreepy replied that she got, "horribly, awfully, mind-bendingly drunk there once." So we wisely stopped at one drink each.

On Sunday after the conference, my planned activity was a visit to the Central Park Zoo with my friend Susan Getgood on our "First (hopefully Annual) Self-Sponsored BlogHer Zoo Trip." It's a small zoo, so it took less than an hour to see the whole thing. Here are a few of my favorite photos:

Polar bear evaluating the possible tastiness of her visitors.

Sacked-out snow leopard

Susan, looking much more cool and unruffled than I managed to at that point in the zoo trip.

After buying souvenirs at the gift shop, we grabbed lunch at the pricier-than-you'd-expect Brooklyn Diner. I had the most transcendently delicious mac and cheese I have ever experienced. It was so wonderful that I didn't even care that it cost double what I'd generally pay for lunch at home.

Once we parted ways, I checked out of my room, stashed my luggage with the bellmen and relaxed in the lobby area for a while before heading to the Museum of Modern Art for the last phase of my New York exploration. 

For the first hour, I wandered fairly aimlessly and took a solid sitting break when my feet started to hurt. I was also unnerved by one of the Yoko Ono installations the whole time (read more about that from MamaPop, Schmutzie and Suebob - I concur with all of them) and was really starting to wonder if it had been a good idea to come. However, I rallied once I made it to the Matisse exhibit and subsequently to the modern art paintings on the floor below. I also ran into Suebob, Goon Squad Sarah and Clumber Kim there, so that made it more fun.

An airport shuttle was scheduled to come for Queen of Quirky and me around 4:25, so I went back a little early and rested back in the hotel lobby for a bit. The shuttle thing didn't work out exactly as planned, but we made it to the airport in plenty of time and were back home by 10 p.m.

So that's the last of my BlogHer adventures. I have some post ideas in waiting, so next we'll move on to something you may actually be interested in!

Average Jane Goes to Parties

If you're at all familiar with BlogHer, you know that there are some pretty awesome parties taking place before, during and after the conference. I have to admit that I like the idea of parties better than the reality sometimes, so I tend to take steps to ensure that I don't get overwhelmed by them.

The first one I went to on Thursday evening was at the Martha Stewart publishing empire's offices. They had lovely hors d'oeuvres and drinks and lots of tables set up to demonstrate various crafts and product lines, but there were so many people jammed into a relatively modest loft space that I had to take little wallflower breaks from time to time. 

After that was the People's Party, an official BlogHer event. That was my first big chance to start tracking down people I wanted to see. I was delighted to meet V from Juggling Scarves. We've been reading each others' blogs and following each other on Twitter for some time. I ran into her and her sister several more times throughout the weekend.

The only other private party I went to was on Friday evening after the Voices of the Year Gala. It was a lovely dinner at the Central Park Boat House, sponsored by Nintendo. As in previous years, I went along as Liz's +1.

Here's how we got there from the hotel:

The last big party I went to was on Saturday night: Sparklecorn. Here was this year's cake, made by none other than Charm City Cakes.

Yes, even the unicorn was made of cake. Chocolate, to be precise. Not shown in the photo were the acres of plain sheet cakes on either side. I had a piece that tasted like blueberry.

Sparklecorn was the one time that my roommates and I were all in one place at one time, awake:

I swear I am not flipping them off. I just grabbed my napkin in an unfortunate way.

Because I am the introvert I am, I had most of my best conversations in the foyer outside the party. I popped in and out for several hours, but eventually retreated to the Chill Lounge downstairs to hang out with a small group of bloggers I hadn't talked to yet. Yes, I skipped CheeseburgHer. I probably shouldn't have, but I'd reached my party limit by then.

Tomorrow will be my last New York post. I'll be telling you about the fun things I did before and after the conference. So what have you been up to all this time?

Average Jane's Cat Improvement Program

Test Subject #1: Xena
Weight: 15.5 pounds
Physique: Excessively Rounded
Cooperation Level: Fair

 

Test Subject #2: Velvet
Weight: 11.2 pounds
Physique: Lean and Muscular
Cooperation Level: Along for the ride

Thanks to BlogPaws and pet food company Nulo, I'm starting a 90-day program to get Xena to slim down. She's a young cat - not even four yet - and I hate to see her so overweight. Yes, I love her even though I know she's plotting to do away with me so she can have my husband to herself.

Velvet is participating as well because she and Xena live in the same part of the house and are used to sharing a food bowl. It's not a "diet food," per se, so she'll benefit from the nutrients without necessarily losing any weight.

Before the program started, I sat in on a conference call with the company's CEO and founder, Mike Landa. He started the company in response to hearing more and more clients of his pet sitting company request pet sitters who could administer insulin to their diabetic pets. It made him take a step back and look for the root cause of the increase in pet obesity that he and his colleagues had been observing, which led straight to their diets.

The Nulo site has a lot of interesting information about ingredients that you do and don't want to see in your pets' food. Their Nutrition Philosophy page even links to a bad ingredients list you can print out and take to the store to help you select the best food.

The coolest thing about their site is that you can create profiles for each of your pets and track their weight and exercise levels (the amount of time you spend playing with them in various ways). If you've ever looked at a weight loss site for humans, it's pretty close to the same thing.

We made the food switch a couple of days ago and the main difference I'm seeing so far is that the cats aren't hoovering through all their food quite as quickly. Supposedly this is because it's more nutritionally dense and filling.

I'll be weighing the cats and posting periodic updates for the next couple of months and I'm really hoping it helps Xena get to a healthier size. I'm embarrassed to admit that I had to give her a treat to get her to stand up so I could get the final photo.

Disclosure: Nulo has generously provided free product and other benefits in exchange for my participation in the Nu Campaign to fight pet obesity. All of the opinions about the product are mine and not dictated in any way by the company.

Average Jane Learns Things

This year, the BlogHer conference agenda was absolutely chock-full of interesting topics. At any given time I had difficulty deciding which session to attend. I generally take into account who is speaking so I can support my friends, but this year I had so many friends on the panels that I couldn't even attempt to see them all.

Here are the sessions I attended (titles are linked to the liveblog transcripts):

Writing Lab: Writing Inspiration: Stoke Your Creativity with Rita Arens, Jan Sokoloff Harness and Carleen Brice.

I enjoyed this one because it was loaded with practical take-aways for focusing your writing, coming up with ideas and finding the time to write (hint: turn off Twitter!).

After lunch (and all the meals at the Hilton were wonderful, by the way), I attended the Change Agents: Creating Tangible Social Change: How to Move People to Action panel with Beth Terry, Gina McCauley, Stephanie Himel-Nelson and Melissa Silverstein. 

It was very interesting to hear how all of the panelists were using their blogs to mobilize people to change their opinions as well as corporate and governmental policy.

My final session of Day One was Social Media is Bringing Sexy Back to Branding -- Do You Have the Social Media Strategy and Tools for Success? with Susan Getgood, Beth Blecherman and Kimberley Blaine. Apparently I forgot I had my camera with me, so no photo of this panel.

I recall that this session introduced me to some new sites that might be of interest. When I track down my notes, I'll come back and be more specific.

On the second day, I started out with Get Hired: Networking With a Purpose Via Social Media with Laurie Ruettimann, Ana Roca-Castro, Carmen Hudson and Heather McGough (NOT because I am job hunting, I'll have you know, but because I correctly predicted that it would be my only chance to see my pal Laurie).

My main personal takeaway from this session was that my LinkedIn profile needs a lot of work, considering that it's my only truly professional outpost online. I'm sure I'll get right on that.

During the break, I bought a copy of Professional Blogging for Dummies and had Susan Getgood autograph it for me. I can't wait to read it.

After lunch, I (gasp!) skipped out on the next session so I could relax a bit before my own panel. I used some of that time to briefly check out the official sponsored suites, then hung out in the Serenity Suite and met new people until it was time to head down to speak.

And yes, I should have written this post sooner because I know I didn't provide a lot of interesting detail. However, I will say that I enjoyed every one of the sessions I attended (except for the uncomfortable chairs).

Do you wanna hear about some fun parties? That's tomorrow's post.

Average Jane's BlogHer Highlights

I'll start by saying that this may have been my favorite BlogHer Conference to date. The keynotes and sessions were amazing, I saw tons of friends and made some new ones, and the venue left absolutely nothing to be desired.

I'll be posting little tidbits until I run out of topics, but I wanted to start with what I considered the personal highlights for me. (Because it's all about ME, ME, ME!)

1. Speaking on the Little Fish in a Big Pond - Understanding, Accepting and Loving Your Small Blog panel with Nora and Catherine.

Photo by lizriz

When you're speaking on a panel, it can be difficult to judge whether or not the audience is digging what you have to say. I had an idea that it was going well because people laughed at all the right junctures and also because the room kept getting more and more full throughout the discussion, rather than emptying out as sessions sometimes do.

As it turned out, this topic hit a nerve with many bloggers who enjoy blogging for its own sake and don't have ambitions to build media empires. After the session and throughout the evening, people kept coming up to me and telling me how much they appreciated the discussion, so it felt like a major triumph.

2. The Voices of the Year Keynote, Gala and Art Exhibit

In a nutshell, this program honored more than a hundred bloggers for their writing and design. Twelve bloggers presented their winning posts at the keynote and it was, as usual, one of my favorite parts of the conference. Ninety additional bloggers, including me, had posts selected as finalists. All of the honorees' posts were then divided up by visual artists who created artwork inspired by each post.

At first I didn't see "my" artwork because I didn't realize how many rooms there were in the exhibit. I walked around and enjoyed all of the other art and the ability to add little "thought balloon" stickers to the display to comment. Then my roommates found me and excitedly told me where I could find the photograph inspired by my post. 

If you click through the link to the original post, I've added a close-up of the artwork, which is called "I'm A Regular Here," and was created by Megan Reardon.

Of course, I also had to take photos of my friends with "their" art:

Kelli with the artwork inspired by her post, "Pissing off people Left and Right."

Liz with the artwork based on "Phone Karma," which she read as a keynote presenter.

Kelly, photographing one of two pieces of artwork inspired by her powerful post, "I'm Black Irish and I'm Proud."

I have lots of other stuff to share, but those two events were definite high points for me and remind me why I keep coming to the conference year after year. Thanks so much to Elisa, Jory and Lisa for making each year better and better!

Average Jane Has BlogHer Brain

People who are around me all the time know that I'm pretty unflappable. I take most things in stride and rarely display a lot of strong emotion.

Well, not this week. For whatever reason, this week's conference is making me lose my mind. I haven't been this excited since I still believed in Santa Claus. Every morning for the last several days I've been waking up with BlogHer-related stuff swirling in my head and it's taken every relaxation technique I know for me to get back to sleep.

I have a packed schedule for the trip. Tomorrow I leave early and get into La Guardia a little before 11 a.m. Queen of Quirky is on my flight, and we're planning to meet up with Cagey and cab share to the hotel. 

At some point in the afternoon, Cagey and I will touch base with our other roommates, Kelli and Dawn. Yep, we're going to have a fun room!

I have speaker training at 5, then two parties in a row. (I've decided that all party RSVPs are to be played by ear. If I'm too tired or have the opportunity to spend quality time with one of my many blog friends instead, the party loses.)

On Friday morning, I'm going to start the day with a brisk 5k walk in Central Park. Based on my usual 5k walk duration, I assume that I'll have plenty of time to shower and make it to the start of the conference day by 9 a.m.

I am beyond excited about the Voices of the Year event, and I can't wait to see if there's a piece of artwork based on the post I wrote. I'll be wearing my new dress to the gala and then to a Nintendo-sponsored dinner that I'm attending as Liz Rizzo's guest. 

I speak on Saturday afternoon, but I'll attend sessions all day before that. In the evening, I'm planning on going to Sparklecorn and CheeseburgHer. Lesson learned from last year: have dinner first.

On Sunday, my flight isn't until the evening, so I have time to do some touristy stuff. That morning, I'm going to the Central Park Zoo with Susan Getgood. I have no concrete plans after that, so if you're around NYC all day Sunday and you want to do something, let me know!

You can see why it's difficult for me to concentrate on anything besides the trip right now.

This is probably the last you'll hear from me until next week. I've decided not to bring my laptop and it seems like more trouble than it's worth to try to blog from an iPhone. But, you never know.

When I get back and finish boring you to death with post-BlogHer stories, I'll be starting a new project involving a couple of the cats. (Foreshadowing!)

Enjoy the rest of your week and weekend.