idle musings

<idle musing>
I haven't had much time to read lately; the garden is taking a good bit of time. Last night I canned 18 pints of bread and butter pickles; Monday night 5 quarts of dilly beans. That takes a chunk of your night away :)

Summer finally arrived over the weekend, with temperatures in the high 80's F and humidity to match. Good for the tomatoes; bad for physical labor.

I was hauling wood chips on Saturday to make a trail in the woods. Sunday, I took apart our 8' x 12' sandbox. The cats had turned it into a litter box :( That's a lot of sand to move, especially by hand with a spade and wheelbarrow. The whole thing was complicated by the nearby Maple tree deciding that the sandbox was for its roots. I suppose riding 40+ miles in the morning against a stiff wind didn't help...

On other notes, I saw a flier last Friday that was trying to guilt-trip people into getting their pets neutered/spayed. They claimed that a cat has 12 kittens per year and lives about 9 years, with the result of several thousand offspring. I don't know how they got that number, but you know the old saying about statistics...

My experience is that a cat might have two litters of 6 cats each per year. But, so far we have had 0, 1, and 1 as survivors in the 2 years we have lived here. We started with 2 cats, now we have more, but not the 144 that they claimed after 2 years...

And, speaking of misuse of statistics, did you see the cover of Time Magazine this week? It says that exercise doesn't make you lose weight. Folks, weight isn't the problem; fat is. I weigh more than I have at anytime in my life; I also am in better shape than anytime since high school when I was swimming on the swim team. My resting heart rate is in the low 50's; I can do 50 push-ups, etc. The bottom line is that muscle weighs more than fat.

Of course, the article qualifies stuff, but the bottom line is exercise without diet change won't help much. And, the part that most people still don't get, is that diets don't work! Covert Bailey preached that for years on PBS and in his books, but people still don't get it. Change what you eat to be more vegetables and fruits; cut out the fast food. Drop the corn syrupy soft drinks; add milk and water. As an aside, we drink about 5-6 gallons of milk per week between the two of us; I drink 2 liters of water at work per day.

Boy, what a rambling post...
</idle musing>