~Saturday~ Although it had stopped snowing by morning, its remnants were all about. With my morning coffee in hand, I opened the blinds on the windows facing my back deck, to a scene that prompted me to write this haiku:
Is that the white noise of snow? Beautiful morning. |
While working on the part about breakfast in yesterday’s blog entry, I Googled, “You been farming long?” to see if I could find a print of that poster. I thought I’d order one for my parents for their upcoming birthdays—mom’s on March 1st and dad’s on April 30th. I was able to order one from walldrug.com, and I found this story about the picture in someone’s blog, although it seems far from “official” to me:
 When I took this picture of my twin sons, Matt and Chris, in September, 1978, they were only 1-1/2 years old. At that time, we lived on “the mesa”, just across from a little town called San Miguel, CA (northern San Luis Obispo County). An overnight visitor was on her way home that morning and wanted a couple pictures of the boys before she left. So, I got my camera out and took a few also. After all, they had their brand new Osh Kosh overalls on!
When the photos came back, there was that one extra-special shot–the lighting was just right, the focus just right, and the expression was priceless. I decided to enter it in the San Luis Obispo County Fair (now known at the Mid-State Fair). Well, it came in 3rd place! But, so many people liked it that they were looking up my name in the phone book in order to ask if they could buy a reprint. Over the next couple of years the photo was used on a Guernsey cow breeders magazine, a Babson Bros. dairy equipment company calendar and then a Saturday newspaper supplement cover that was syndicated across the U.S. One day in 1982, I got a telephone call from a man named Roy Reiman, a publisher of magazines mainly geared to “country” type people. He had an idea for using the picture on the first issue of a new magazine he was about to publish–Country Kids. When I received the offer, he had decided he wanted to do a poster instead of the cover and then he would offer one poster free for each new subscription to Country Kids. The poster came out with the caption “You been farming long?” on it and that seemed to be exactly what it took for people to love it. |
I’m still in make-up mode at the gym as a result of three days of travel and not at all watching my diet. Normally today I would have only done upper body and ab crunches, but I went ahead and threw in 30 minutes of cardio, too.
I upped my weights on about half of the machines, and didn’t feel as much burn as I have in the past with the last couple of sets of the crunches, so that’s some progress. The 30 minutes on the cross-trainer were a little more arduous than usual, after doing the other stuff, but I still manged to pass them aggressively, for a 573-calorie burn.
Toward the end of my workout, J.R. came in and we exchanged hellos. He told me that, “Anna says hi,” which made me smile.
When I got home, I browned some ground beef to make a nice taco salad, since I had salsa and some baked tortilla chips on hand.
Much to my annoyance, when I went into dailyburn.com to account for my dinner, and more specifically for the ground beef, as I replaced the nutritional information for that last (96% lean) beef I bought for today’s (97% lean), I found these numbers:
| Nutritional Information | 96% Lean | 97% Lean |
| Calories (from fat) | 150 (40) | 170 (70) |
| Total Fat | 4.5 grams | 8 grams |
| Carbs | 0 grams | 0 grams |
| Protein | 24 grams | 23 grams |
WTF?!? I’m calling the nutrition police. Seriously, what’s up with that?
Affirmations in the U.S. Mail, from yesterday, actually. I forgot to capture them:
- A sweet, punny card from Robert, with a hole puncher on the front, and on the inside holes in the hard from a hole puncher in the shape of a heart, saying underneath it: “I love you a hole punch! Happy Valentine’s Day!” Loved it! And him!
- A card from my friend Joe in sympathy for the loss of my aunt. Sweet.
- An invitation to my friend Geromy’s PhD graduation in May. The graduation ceremony is in the morning, and a reception follows at noon.
I met Joe at Flex at 10:00, where we proceeded to drink too much, but had a good time catching up, since it had been a while since we’d seen each other.
Later in the evening, Vann (“military Vann”) showed up, which did nothing but kick-up the drinking a notch, as he’s a one-in-each-hand kind of Jack-and-Coke drinker and very generous to his friends.
At about 1:00, we walked over to The Borough, where we had some killer cheese fries with ranch dressing and the rest of the last bottle in the place of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce.
Wayne, David, and Mark Z. was there with a lady friend. I said my hellos to all of them, and thought of Mark as a possible model that my friend Kim’s friend is looking for for a drawing class she’s teaching. I’ll hook them up tomorrow.