A couple of fails

I've had a few setbacks in my project.  Setback one:  The goal was to wear my fitbit and log calories every day for 60 consecutive days.  I started on Dec 25th, and made it to Feb 10th.  So close!  I think the flu, and the endless hammering of snowstorms derailed me.  But logging calories wasn't really helping much.  I'd like to lose about 15 lbs, but instead I lost and regained 2 lbs, repeatedly.  It might possibly add up to 15 if you count all the separate times I lost two lbs...  And logging food is not so much fun.  But I guess I'll start again.  Today, maybe.  Maybe I can combine it with some of my other fitness oriented goals.

Regarding food, I wanted to try and improve our diet, inspired by Sharon and David and other friends who eat huge quantities of fruit and vegetables and zero processed foods.   So two weeks ago I bit the bullet and shopped at Whole Foods for the week.  Wow, they have nice food there, and it is a lot easier to buy healthy food and not get so tempted to buy the junk foods.  But, my grocery bill doubled.  Factor of two, no exaggeration.  But, I enjoyed our dinners a lot that week.  So this week I thought, maybe I go to two stores and buy the meats and olive bar items at whole foods, and the butter/milk/eggs/bread etc at the regular store.  Sadly, this reduced the total by about $5 or so.  I think I have to give up on the Whole Foods idea, I just need to buy the whole foods at the regular grocery store.  It's not that you can't get them there, it's that it's harder to get inspired.  I suppose that is Whole Foods' entire business model.  But I digress.

Regarding failures:  Another goal was to practice every week for one orchestra cycle.  I got off to a great start, and I have to say, my orchestra experience has been much improved as a result, so this goal has improved my life but it has also been derailed.  I skipped the week I had the flu (forgivable), and then I skipped the following week (less forgivable).  So I guess I'll have to try again next cycle.  Which is the pops concert, never my favorite.  Argh.  There is that one week where there are two dress rehearsals and three concerts and you know, that adds up to about $450 in babysitting, if you think about it. 

And while we are on the topic of failures, there is work I am supposed to be getting done this weekend.  This is a side project with no funding behind it, so it needs to get squeezed into the cracks, but deadlines for it and also for my real projects are all fast approaching and I am starting to feel overwhelmed.  And I am grumpy about this because this was supposed to be one of the perks of leaving academia, not having to do very much work on evenings and weekends.  But I am having trouble keeping up, and I work on evenings and weekends rather a lot.  I really ought to write this thing, it would probably even be fun, but I don't want to start.  So I am instead suffering the failure-to-achieve guilt.  I've spent hours shopping and cleaning and laundering and tending to playdates for my kid, and still need to clean the fishtanks and fold the laundry, and I just want a break.  So I guess I am venting in this blog, instead of writing the thing I am meant to be writing. 

And I am looking at these 101 things, and they all suddenly look so hard.  I am tired and these things take time, and money, and energy, and time.  Maybe it'll look better tomorrow... I have made a little progress on "Try 10 new restaurants," here are the results:

1. Lemon Tree Thai - Awesome, loved the fried tofu in the pad thai, and really enjoyed the thai basil and rice as well. Want to go back and try more adventurous dishes.
2. Asiana Take Out - Super yummy, but really expensive, I think it was $38 for Jack and I.  Although we did eat the leftovers for three more meals, so I could just order less food.  
3. Kens NY Deli and Brick Oven Pizzeria - This is an amazing find. Terrific Pizza and they serve beer, and it's in between the daycare and my house. 
4. Sparta Restaurant - Doesn't really have Greek food like we'd hoped, but the steak tips were yummy, and Jack gobbled down his chicken fingers, so I'd say it's solid. 
5. Savvor - Southern food near Chinatown in Boston.  Small plates, great food, also on the pricy side.  The music was too loud, but the lady that did a cover of "all about the bass"was awesome.  

...Night passes...

I've also invented two recipes involving fish.  The first is a miso-honey glaze for salmon, from the Nordstrom cookbook, but I substituted onion soup for miso because I didn't have Miso.  Yum!  The second experiment was born of necessity - I had tomatoes that were starting to get wrinkley, so I chopped them up, added three strips of crumbled bacon and some Mediterranean Olive Tappenade, and threw that over some baked salmon, double yum!  That one is a keeper for sure. 

And now it is time to face my Monday morning, which is more difficult because I did not in fact do my work yesterday.  Sigh.