Progress Report
I’m really looking forward to warmer weather and being able to use my bicycle. I cut way down on walking and switched to Dance Dance Revolution. I pant more and sweat more than when I’m walking, so I thought I was getting a really good work out, but when I set the game on exercise mode it said my two and a half hours only amounted to 200 calories.
Then I made a terrible mistake. I ate pizza.
I very carefully picked a gourmet style with thin crust. I thought I would be fine with two slices, but I didn’t check before I ate. Always check. Always, always check. Turned out to be 400 calories per slice. I ended up waaaay over my limit of 1500 for the day.
I guess I’ll be going hungry for a few days to make up for this.
A Flower for Kimberly
Matt took a shovel with him into the yard. Somewhere out here under the snow was a flower that Kimberly liked. Some kind of yellow, trumpet looking thing. She always made a big deal of it.
He dug in one drift, and then another. That flower always popped up through the snow. It had to be out here somewhere. Probably in a month it would be easy to find, but he didn’t have a month.
He didn’t want to cave in to the commercialism of Valentine’s Day, but he had to come up with something. Where were the free flowers when you needed them?
The Hub: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Photo credit: The Reclining Gentleman
A Hidden Restaurant
We left the Prambanan Temple Complex fairly close to dinner time. The nice thing about a packaged tour is that you don’t have to worry about where you will eat or finding a place that should be food-safe. You just get on the bus and the touring company will take you to a place at about the right time.
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Suzie’s House 443 : Guitars at a Music Store
Gene held the music shop door open for Tracy. He followed close on her heels as she made a beeline for the guitars hanging on the far wall.
“Technically it was Aunt Stephanie who gave me the money. Mom didn’t say one way or another about getting a guitar. She just said I could have some money to play with over summer vacation. She probably thought I’d go for movies and burgers. I was supposed to get a little at a time. Maybe she thinks I don’t have enough backbone to save it for something big.”
Get On the Bus
This ominous black bus is part of Indonesia’s anti-corruption campaign. It goes from place to place and educates the masses about their rights and responsibilities regarding corruption. IT also received complaints from the citizens. Apparently this has proven effective as problems with corruption have decreased noticeably since it began.
I’m well aware that it is serious business, but I couldn’t help thinking Men in Black.
Rice Among the Lotus
Miyamoto Musashi cut down a hundred swordsmen in a single night. A ronan, he destroyed many dojos as proof of his power. He fought and defeated some of the most famous samurai of his day. Yet, broken and alone, he arrived in a destitute village as a beggar. Given the chance to farm, the rice paddies defeated him. In his defeat he discovered enlightenment. When at last the emperor’s men came to ask his allegiance, he no longer had the heart to kill.
The Hub: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Photo credit: Erin Leary
A ronan was a sword fighter who did not owe allegiance to a lord. Generally they were considered between jobs.
A dojo is a school for some form of martial arts. It can be a karate school, or one for wielding a sword. Crushing such groups was considered a normal way for a young fighter to prove his worth.
13 Things to Eat
I’m back on my diet. From the end of July until the middle of January I refused to count calories. I did keep an eye on “My Plate” and pushed the exercise. That isn’t enough. My weight stayed at 170lb, plus or minus a couple of pounds. Wishful thinking got me nowhere. Ive been counting the calories and fat grams for about a week now and have already lost four pounds. Oddly enough, today and yesterday I had to make myself eat MORE because I ended up the day too low. Here are the last 13 things I ate.
1. 24 Wheat thin airbake crackers. This brought me up to 1353 calories for the day.
2. A handful of nuts because they are a great source of fat.
3. A fortune cookie
4. Tofu
5. Cellophane noodles
6. Bean sprouts
7. PB2, a peanut butter substitute
8. Blueberry jam
9. Homemade bread
10. No-fat Greek yogurt
11. Boysenberry syrup on the yogurt
12. Half a slice of homemade bread
13. turkey
The covers everything for the day.
Nope, I’m not done with Indonesia. Just taking a little break
Suzie’s House 442 : The Money In Hand
Normally Bruce would have been sneaking looks at Gene all through the practice session because of that missing money. This time he got so caught up in writing a song with Emma that he almost forgot. Almost.
Zoos
At the end of the our visit to Prambanan Temple Complex, the train let us out near the entrance where we ran into something of a zoo. I can’t say I really considered it a zoo. There were only a few cages. The emu, and some deer seemed to be the only exhibits.
Just how much of an exhibit does there need to be to consider something a zoo? I thought the one we visited in Belize was rinky dink. To be separated from a jaguar by no more than a fence and a sign saying not to stick your fingers through the wire struck my American sensibilities and outlandish. But at least they had a score of cages.
This… I’m not so sure. It felt kind of like they just parked the animals there for lack of a better place to put them.
Not that it mattered. I was still basking in the glow of my new found ability to climb steps.
On the Job
Drew stood outside the building. He had a wire, but it only went to a recorder hidden under his bomber jacket. His partners didn’t know he was here. They thought the drug king pin worked out of a warehouse somewhere on the edges of Albuquerque. Drew’s informant said the man could be found here and he could get in by saying, “Tell El Jefe that Dave sent me.”
The dogs were chained. They buzzed him through the gate when he said the right words to the intercom. The door opened just as he was adjusting the camera in the button of his breast pocket.
“Wrong house. El Jefe moved. But if you need a fix…”
Drew hesitated. A long time.
The Hub: Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
Photo credit: © ceayr
Prambanan Temple Complex. Yeah, again.
The area just past the ticket boot for the Prambanan Temple is a lovely garden. You can see it here. It’s #10. Once you get past that, you’re faced with a jumble of rock. As the archaeologists uncover the stones, they pile them up in the area. Until they have more than 75% of a given temple, they can’t do anything with it. Considering there were 224 temples in the area before volcanic activity and earthquake took them down in the 16th century, that can add up to a lot of rock.
Suzie’s House 441 : Emma’s Song II
Tracy and Emma beat him to the practice room. Bruce had tried to get there first because he’d been in a rush to leave after the last practice session and had forgotten to pack away his Casio. It might not be the best synthesizer he owned, but he still didn’t want people messing with it.
