Accismus

I doubt very much that anyone will notice or care, but lest you think I unfriended you on Facebook, I did not — I deactivated my account. Reason being, my news feed was suddenly flooded with sponsored posts of sexist cartoons, and given how often I post about feminist stuff and how sudden and overwhelming this deluge was, I don’t think it’s overly paranoid to assume I was being targeted with one of Facebook’s engagement experiments.

I don’t actually have anything against free online services experimenting with user data, but I’m not going to be bombarded with offensive shit just so I can look at pictures of my friends’ lunches, so I’m done with that. Anyway, I’ve always meant to stop wasting my time on Facebook, and start wasting my time on Twitter and Instagram. I might even blog more! But probably not.

Sat To-Do List:

• Long run
• Dishes
• Clean up yard
• Laundry
• Grocery shopping
• Write a blog post, and otherwise stay offline
• Cook all greens before they go bad

Sat Done List:

• Bought $200 worth of clothes online
• Read 1.5 YA novels
• All The Internet (except blog post)
• Fell asleep from 2-4pm
• Ate four bowls of Cheerios
• Threw away rotten greens
• Watched Project Runway

Well. It’s still seven things…

 

Did you know that Albuquerque has a monsoon season? Neither did I! It does. It’s in July, weirdly. Here’s what it looks like (it’s worth answering that irritating trivia question to see the flooded car). Those photos are from flash flooding downtown last night. I live seven miles away from this at higher elevation, and I had no idea.

It’s been storming off and on for weeks up here on the hills, but it’s always dry as a bone by the time I go for my run. The only clue that there’s been rain is that, whereas a month ago, the high desert really felt like desert, now I am coming across things like this everywhere in amongst the yellowed prickly pears:

(Forgive the terrible quality of that photo; I neglected to take my phone out of its plastic sports sleeve before taking it, but you get the idea.)

Storms in Albuquerque are extremely bizarre — they are sudden and major and they come out of nowhere. A couple of weekends ago, I had the garage door open because I was doing laundry in there, and it was in the 90s so I needed ventilation. The sky was clear and blue, and the sun was as intense as ever. All of a sudden, I heard this weird rattling sound and went around the house looking for the source of it.

It was hail. By the time I went to check on the garage, my car was sitting in a small lake. Ten minutes later, it was as if it had never happened.

This place just gets weirder and weirder.

I read a lot of blogs, and every so often, I get bored with the ones I’ve been reading and purge my Feedly. Then, I go on the hunt for new ones. Continue reading “New (To Me) Blogs I Like”

I’ve decided that this summer will be the Summer of Self-Discipline (doesn’t that sound fun??). It’s very hard to change bad habits, but I’ve found that one easy way to do this is to replace your bad habit with a slightly less-bad habit.

For example, I used to drink wine most evenings. I wanted to quit doing this, because it’s expensive, unhealthy, and puts weight on. But I had a problem: when I didn’t have some wine, I wanted some really badly!

Now, I don’t know if this is just a weird quirk about me, but I don’t like to want things I can’t have. If I want something, I prefer to have it.

So I found a solution: instead of wine, I wait until I actually crawl into bed every night, and then I have a couple of fingers’ worth of good whiskey. See? A healthy swap!

Maybe I’ll turn this into a healthy living/personal coaching blog and teach all of you how to be as healthy and disciplined as I am.