My Afflation

Sometimes I can't pull dinner out of a hat. I have the ingredients but no clue how to pull them together. It's rare. Today was one of those days. We are on a mission to eat everything in the house before going grocery shopping again. Too much food has been going to waste. The chest freezer is almost empty (which the Teen pointed out has never happened in his memory). <a href="http://storify.com/dananner/crowdsourced-dinner" target="_blank">View "Crowd-sourced Dinner" on Storify</a> Recipes: Butternut Squash Soup It's a little watery since I omitted the heavy cream, but both the Hunk and the Teen approve. Ingredients 2lbs butternut squash, diced 1 onion - diced 2 cloves garlic or equivalent garlic powder 4-6 cups chicken or vegetable broth nutmeg, salt, pepper, and cinnamon to taste 1 TBSP olive

It's been a busy week. We re-committed to working out daily. I'm definitely the slacker in accountability relationships, so I need the extra push. The only upside is on the rare occasions when the Hunk wants to stop I get to give it right back to him.  I'm also in charge of the menus and portion control, one of the few things I'm good at. The past week looked like this: Sunday : biked 4 miles running errands, then walked 3.3 more miles throughout the day. Monday : 2 mile walk Tuesday : I'm not a very good swimmer (translation I sink like a rock) but I did some pool jogging and then laps on my back. My goal was to get across the pool a few times without my feet touching bottom. After dinner did a 2.5 mile walk with Zoe and the Hunk. Wednesday : more walking. My dog is losing weight faster than I am. Thursday : swimming. I float on my back and try not to drown in three feet of water. I'm getting better. Friday : more swimming. It's a good week for

There's a new meme going around the social media set and I finally jumped on the bandwagon. How it works We are using data from your Twitter account's tweets (posts) combined with some twitter data from our friends over at infochimps. Our Twitterize yourself tool will generate an infographic in an instant based upon your information. The 'outfits' and 'accessories' are chosen based upon keywords most associated for you. For example, if you tweet a lot about wineries, you will see a wine glass in your hand; Go to the ballpark often? Then your avatar will be dressed in a sports jersey and so on. There are a total of 11 possible outfits that depict your overall Twitter personality and 29 different accessories that could be assigned to show your interests. Geeky grin : I do like to smile Gamer : I guess because I tweet a lot about Android Obsession : I think my last 200-500 tweets have included a higher ratio of tweets from Goodreads and about No

My body puzzles me -- all the time. This past week I didn't have much activity, or much appetite, and I lost six pounds. Possibly more since I got my hair done. So I'm down to 186. If my body is in starvation mode, it's shedding instead of holding onto fat, which works for me. I wish I could figure out what makes my body tick. BLOGGING CARNIVAL: Question: What has been your favorite Grunt Style workout? If you aren’t doing his workouts what has been your strength training routine? Answer : I've been MIA from Mamvation for about a month and didn't know that we had new workout. I have ben doing P90X sporadically as my back allows me. I seriouly think the bike riding I started is doing wonders for my legs. Walking isn't necessarily strength-training, but it's building up my stamina so that I can go on longer bike rides without feeling like all of the air has left my body. I can't wait to go on a decent hike again! *Disclosure: This post is spo

Photo courtesy of Breaking News This morning I almost missed the last launch of Atlantis, the last of the space shuttles to be retired. I think I would have been really upset if I had missed it. One of the dreams I had as a little girl was to be the first Black doctor in space. Mae Jemison beat me to it. The closest I have gotten was having Sally Ride as my physics professor at UCSD. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, and NASA really embracing social media, I was able to find a mobile optimized version of the stream. I actually watched the first 10 minutes on the official NASA TV site, but then started getting lag, so switched to the Ustream NASA Mobile channel. Streaming Live by Ustream As of this writing, the stream is still live. I just watched the shuttle separate before it switched to Mission Control.