yea...the europeans are fat now too...

EU says Europeans are getting fatter
By RAF CASERT, Associated Press Writer
Wed May 30, 8:58 AM ET

A majority of adults are obese or overweight in most European Union nations and kids increasingly contributing to make Europe a fat continent, the EU's top public health official said Wednesday. (more)

really i'm not overjoyed by fat europeans but i do think it's interesting that cultures continue to become obese and others continue to suffer malnutrition and starvation. i realize this occurs because of all sorts of reasons but it just baffles me.

so much of life is baffling.

it's wednesday and rather rainy and overcast. it has been like this for days now.

this morning my alarm didn't go off and i slept until 8:45 a.m. ooopsy. i changed my alarm on sunday to 9am because we were planning on going to church and never changed it back. church, you ask. well yes, so we got up showered and i checked the web site to confirm start time and the church we were going to (bridgeway) wasn't having service because it was memorial day weekend. i found this to be very odd...maybe even baffling. but then again they are hippies. but anyway, we took it as a sign that we weren't supposed to go to church and we watched pirates of the carribean 2.

i hit the farmer's market again today...after being at work for an hour. i really am a bad employee.

speaking of work...i should go do some.

can't sleep...again.

i can't sleep because of my over-active brain. lately i've been buying into that "get up and write things down" theory which i've practiced a couple of times with a pen and paper but i'm not sure blogger is in the theory.

anyway, i digress. it's been a lovely weekend. lovely in a stressful sort of way. on friday night i picked up our new family member also known as the 17-inch iMac. i'm so giddy with the newness but also very stressed about the newness and my complete lack of apple knowledge. honestly, i'm scared of it. the fancy i contain everything in the monitor, the center of the universe apple key, strange dashboards and the wonderful, hidden speakers. so really i've been stressed, trying to figure it out, while also tying in my ancient PC into the process. do i keep it? what should it function as? what to do with the external harddrive and the 12 million songs on it? what about a desk...i don't have a desk to put in on. irrational, stupid stress...yes. but wait there's more.

i've been sort of waiting on a mac. knowing that when i did i would start my pursuit of more graphic design knowledge and experience (ie. work). it was sort of off in the distance. but now...i have no excuse. and that stresses me out to. what if i can't do it? what if instead of being active and seeking my dream of not working a boring 8 to 5 job - i just keep doing the thing i complain to all of you about.

sigh...i really do annoy myself sometimes.

anyway, it was a lovely weekend. a new family member, internet on both computers, and hanging out with some old friends and some new friends that are really, really old friends. and then there was pirates (2 and 3) which has left me feeling very water logged.

i'm feeling a little groggy now so i should make my move.

a little self-help to kick off the weekend...

stolen from here. i'm always trying to be happier...more content so i was interested in the below. i realize some of them are pretty much common sense but #5 was interesting to me and rang true. when i eat good...i'm much better to myself in other way. hmmmm...happy weekending.

Advice for getting happier: Instead of focusing on what’s wrong with people, try focusing on what’s right with people -what makes people happy, successful and more productive. This is what the positive psychologists do.

Senia Maymin (pronounced Sen-ya) has a master’s degree in applied positive psychology. What this means is that she uses the science of happiness to help people make their lives better. She divides what we know about happiness into five categories, and she explains how we can make headway in each one of them in order to improve our lives.

1. Increase our positive thinking.
The key to thinking positively is being optimistic. The way you determine if you are optimistic or pessimistic is how you explain things. When the copy machine doesn’t work, is the world out to get you? Do all copy machines never work ever? Or is this something that sometimes happens and you can deal with it by calling a repair person?

You can teach yourself to be more optimistic by teaching yourself to reframe situations by telling different stories. The stories we tell shape how we see the world. If you tell stories about your ability to get what you want then you are more likely to believe you can do it. As super-optimist (and radio host) Karen Salmansohn says, “You can take your story of woe and turn it into a story of wow.”

2. Increase your positive emotions.
When you are feeling good, you can come up with more solutions to your problems. So the world looks more like something you can affect to get what you want. The less positive you are feeling, the fewer possibilities you see for creating success.

Also, if you have practice feeling positive, then when bad things happen you are accustomed to going to a wide solution space, so you will go there reflexively. This means you’ll get out of a bad spot faster and more effectively.

One way to increase positive feelings is to write a list of things you’re grateful for every night before you go to bed. Doing this actually changes how you think.

3. Increase your authenticity and your strength.
It’s very hard to figure out what you’re really good at. And by the time most of us figure out what we are good at we think it’s too late to change what we’re doing. So we just sort of pretend that we are doing what we are really good at.

Don’t do that. You’ll be happier if you are true to your strengths. To figure out what you are best at try taking the strengths assessment at the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center or try taking the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator.

And then believe the results. Act on them. Don’t make excuses for why you can continue doing something you’re not great at.

4. Increase your positive choices and decisions
First of all, having more choices does not make us happier. In fact it makes the decision making process less positive because we spend too much time obsessing over what we should do. An example of this is that you don’t need 15 Chinese restaurants to choose from in order to have a nice night out eating Chinese food.

Another way to think about choices is that if you train yourself how to be at decision points, then you can simplify your life in a way that makes you choose better. Take going to the gym. If you tell yourself there is no choice but go to the gym then there is not a huge process of deciding what is most important each evening after work.

Telling stories helps here, too. If you remind yourself of all the bad things that happened the a bad decision then you will less likely to feel that that is a decision point going forward. Example of what works: The French government puts gruesome photos of car accidents on billboards to get people to wear seatbelts.

5. Increase positive habits.
If you do one positive thing in your life, there is spillover into other aspects of your life. In the big picture, this can explain why if you are living in poverty and you enter into a loving relationship you are likely to get out of poverty.

In a study by Roy Baumeister, college students who were asked to take better care of their finances for a few weeks found that they unexpectedly also found themselves going to the gym more often, eating better, and getting better grades.

But you should remove temptation, because you can only withstand it so many times before it wears you down. This means you should get the m&m’s off your desk.

Creating one positive habit encourages you to live your life more consciously and more positively all around.

coffee please.

i've become a coffee addict. not only do i need it in the morning - i now want it in the afternoon. a little pick me up.

please help me. how do i break free?

all better now...

our small drainage problem is all fixed now. fingers are crossed. i could really use a string of good luck right now. or at least a string of everything working for awhile.

i've been pretty frustrated this week which has led to me being pretty stressed. which equals me being cranky. e slowly becoming cranky and blu hiding out in the other room. it's no good for anyone. hopefully i will calm down some.

and now that idol is over and most of the season finales have aired maybe i will get a few things done. (ie. exercise, cooking good meals, cleaning my house, doing a craft, reading a book).

some happy news we have a lovely mac coming our way soon...a slighty used one that our lovely friends are selling us at a very lovely price. i'm super excited but not sure where i'm going to put it or how to properly operate it. i think i'm going to go to a little intro class.

i've been trying to do this photo blog too. i'm not sure double blogging was such a good idea - especially when i'm having a hard time posting here regulary. plus, i'm trying to take photos that force me to look for visually interesting things and that's hard. because my average day involves me sitting in a cube for eight long hours and an hour or so commuting and the rest is often my boring house. so again, i'm pressuring myself, stressing out, getting annoyed and wanting to quit. really...when will i learn.

i'm a mess.

if it's not one thing...it's another

i was starting to think that our spell of broken things was over...i was wrong. something about air conditioner condensation, a drain, a clog and a wet floor. between the a/c, my car, broken household appliances and pancreatisis - i am becoming very frustrated with my life.

work is ok. i have project coming up that's fairly entertaining and fun.

i ate pretty good last week in pursuit of my skinny capris but it went down hill starting on friday and continued through the weekend. today i'm doing better. and i've been walking a lot at the lake since the weather has been nice.

the farmer's market downtown opens this week and i'm looking forward to some fresh stuff. but i'm guessing it will be mid-june before the good stuff starts arriving.

e is traveling some this week but will be back for the holiday. no big plans. just looking forward to a day off work.

i got a couple of books for my birthday. one is a sewing book - i think i'm going to do a little crafting soon.

wow. this is a very exciting post.

headline of the day...

Iraq a "terrorist Disneyland" if U.S. goes: expert

interesting...terrorist disneyland...

it's tuesday, the sun has come out. i'm trying to count points and get back in my skinny capris. i'm making myself exercise this week and catching a few season finales.

and do you remember years ago when summer tv sucked. you could count on watching less tv in the summer - just because there was less to watch. now they have a whole new season of tv and that's bad news.

tangent...sorry.

because i needed something else to do...

for my birthday (with some birthday funds) i purchased a new digital camera for myself. for awhile i've wanted a small camera that i could keep with me to take casual, random shots. i've decided to try and do a photo a day - no rules - just a photo a day. the thought is that it might help me be more aware of my surroundings - look for more interesting things. we'll see.

anyway, i've started a little sub-blog over at www.my32ndyear.blogspot.com.

rent a dog...

i really don't know what to say about this...other than...are children next?

what is wrong with this statement?

Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that disasters such as worldwide famine and an obesity epidemic could destroy the U.S. health care system unless politicians begin to look ahead and cooperate. (more)

worldwide famine and the obesity epidemic in america - it's very sad to me that these things can happen simultaneously.

sigh...

it has seriously been a long week. you would think being my birthday week - it would be lovely. not lovely. just long. i've had a few outings, a massage, a pedi, a mani, a few too many meals, and really long, boring and tiring days. tgif.

and today i was once again reminded that people annoy the crap out of me. someone hacked (is that the right word?) my ebay account and put 30 individual golf clubs up for auction. and the only reason i found out is because people started asking questions and those emails came to me. errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....i spent about 2 hours trying to fix the mess. why ebay doesn't have a super, simple contact form...i'll never know. anyway, i think all is finally well and only one item sold (a serious golfer, i assume) and hopefully their refund will be simple and smooth. sigh. my faith is people is growing weaker and weaker by every dishonest/indecent act that happens to me.

sorry for the drama...

here's to a speedy friday.

holy macaroni...i am one of them.

after years of wondering...who really are those nielsen families? we are, we are...

i'm so excited to fill out my little tv viewing diary and control the fate of tv shows.

i really am a nerd.