Snow and Wimping Out

I think Mark and I are wimping out today. We had grandiose plans that included going to shul in the morning, playing Mah Jongg all afternoon (Mark would have been at the gym), having dinner out, and then going to Saul's house for another shiva minyan. This meant leaving the house around 9 a.m. and not getting home until after 10 p.m. Then it snowed. The forecast kept changing, but when we went to bed, they had moved it up to a bigger event. This morning they had pulled it back to 1-3 inches. Normally that would not bother me too much, but up here in Baltimore we don't trust the roads. After that horrible episode of driving 9.5 miles to the hospital in two and a half hours in one inch of snow, we are a little leery. The temperatures are not going much above freezing, and after dark they will be well below again. I just don't want to worry about what the roads will be like. Going to Greenbelt and then Silver Spring would be about 90 miles round trip. It just seemed like too much. Sorry everybody, we just couldn't do it.

Instead we are hunkering down for another day inside. I said yesterday that I would do a lot of reading, but I didn't. I only read the usual amount of one book just before bed. I watched a lot of TV and dozed off a lot. It was quite a lazy day. BTW, I was asked what four books I am reading simultaneously. Well, I am reading two classics: Uncle Tom's Cabin, in actual book form, and Wuthering Heights, from iBooks on the iPhone. I'm also reading two recent novels: The Men and the Girls, in actual book form, and Heat Wave, on my Kindle. This one is the "second" book written by Richard Castle. If you watch the TV show Castle, you'll see the humor in that. It's pretty cool.

At least I did follow my food plan yesterday. I ate 2100 calories, not really a diet plan, but it was good because I did what I planned. I also dropped a few pounds, mostly water. I am going to try really hard today to stick to the plan again. I have written down today's planned foods, and it is about 1700 calories. When I was really trying hard to lose weight, I would consider that a BAD day, but now I'm thinking that will be an awesome day. As long as I'm eating 3 Activia yogurts and several servings of sourdough bread for the C Diff, it's hard to keep the calories down to 1200 and still feel like I'm eating enough nutrition. The main thing is to STOP eating 4000 calories a day! That's how I have ballooned up to over 240 pounds again. That and not moving very much anymore.

I will admit I have given up on the sauerkraut. I finished the original jar, and I thought I bought exactly the same brand again. UGH! I tried to eat it for lunch yesterday. After one bite, I threw it out. It was completely disgusting, very different than the other jar. The first jar was sour and nasty, but at least it was very crispy and crunchy with a vague taste of pickle. It was tolerable if not delicious. This jar was VERY sour, no resemblance to pickle taste, and soggy! That was the worst. The only thing making the other jar tolerable was the crunch. I don't know why this jar is so different even though it had the same label on it, but I do not intend to eat any of it. Sorry!

Mark and I plan to watch a lot of TV episodes online that we missed from last week. It will be a low-key day like yesterday. I admit I'm wimping out. In fact, it's only 10:15 a.m. and I already cannot see anymore snow flakes coming down. There probably is barely an inch of snow out on the sidewalk and car. One car went down our road and made a tire track. I'm sure I could do it, but I'm just wimping out today. I hope my Mah Jongg girls forgive me. I hope they all win lots of games, too!