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Losing Weight — Introspective

Aug 26th, 2011

by Dan.

There haven’t been many pictures of me on the Internet. There’s been a reason for that. At one point a couple of years ago I weighed 315 lb. I was threatening to burst out of 46″ slacks. I was not proud of the way I looked at the Model Theological Conference in St. Louis at the beginning of 2010.

The first thing I did when I decided I was not going to buy anything in a 48″ waist was to download Lose-It! for my iPod Touch. The app is a combination food diary and weight-loss tracker. It suggests an amount of calories to net (food intake – exercise) each day. It has a great web site to accompany the app. By the time summer 2010 rolled around, I wasn’t pushing hard against the 46″ any more, even without exercising.

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Washing Machine Tech: Not All H-E Detergents “True” H-E

Aug 26th, 2011

by Dan.

2 comments

I had a Sears appliance technician come and work on our washing machine, which was intermittently throwing a bizarre error code and shutting down in the middle of the cycle.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t reproduce the error, but he did say a couple of things about the detergent. We’d been using All “free and clear,” which has the “h-e” symbol on it for our high efficiency washer.

First, since we were on relatively clean city water, we didn’t need even as much as the cap suggested: only 1-2 tbsp. of detergent was necessary.

Secondly, he said their tech department has been saying that Tide, Cheer, and Gain carry an extra additive that makes them true high-efficiency detergents. He couldn’t say what it was. I’ll have to see if I can find ingredients lists.

Finally, he recommended a washer cleaner, affresh, to clean out the washing machine once a month.

Humor: Responses to 5.8 Virginia Quake

Aug 23rd, 2011

by Dan.

1 comment

I was working in the basement at home during the earthquake in Virginia.

First thought: “Why am I so tipsy?”
Second thought: “This isn’t right. I haven’t been drinking…”

Later: “As much as I like a government shutdown…praying people are safe.”

Someone else had a photo of the damage in DC.

Your favorite earthquake responses. Go.

First Blooms

May 25th, 2011

by Dan.

3 comments

Our clematis vine doesn’t bloom until June, but some of our other flowers are already out of the shoot (chute).

If someone can remind me what the purple one is called I’d greatly appreciate it.

Full Rainbow Arch

May 22nd, 2011

by Dan.

Comments are off for this post

I didn’t have the wide lens required to catch the whole thing in one frame, but it was really cool to see a full rainbow in the backyard this evening.

So, kind of stitch these together in your head. You can’t see it very well, but there was a double rainbow on the right side. Hooray, diffraction!