March pleasure reading

This month I read The Queen Mother: The Official Biography by William Shawcross.  This was a really interesting read, especially having recently seen The King’s Speech (which was excellent, the best movie I can remember seeing in probably my whole life).  I didn’t really know that much about the Queen Mum before reading this book other than that she was Queen Elizabeth II’s mother and that she lived to be over 100 years old, but I learned a lot about what the life of the daughter of an Earl during the early 1900s was like, especially growing up in WWI and becoming Queen during WWII).  I found it particularly interesting that members of the royal family just went out and about to parties, without big delegations of Secret Service-like men and that she met her future husband, Prince Albert, just at a friend’s house.  I believe King George V and Queen Mary were the first royals who were allowing their children to marry British subjects as opposed to foreign royalty, so it was fortunate that Elizabeth was even able to marry Prince Albert.

It was also interesting to learn more about King Edward VIII’s abdication and how neither Elizabeth nor Prince Albert had any desire to be the reigning monarchs, but I guess you can’t control everything.  American women sure have a way of messing with men’s minds, huh?

I really like the current queen, not like I know her personally, but she seems to be a smart, methodical, and pragmatic woman, and those are all admirable qualities.  I also like her because when I was about 5, I told my stepmother I wanted to send a Christmas card to the Queen of England.  So I did, and one of her ladies in waiting wrote back to me!  I wish I knew where that letter was now because it was really cool!  But anyone who can take the time to write back to an American 5 year old is pretty wonderful.

Anyway, I will hit up the Duke library again this afternoon when I return this book to see if there’s something else I want to read.  I went to see Dr. Jane Goodall speak yesterday, so I would like to read one of her books eventually (although I’m sure with her having been to Duke and the moving of her archives to Duke she is probably a popular author at the moment and it could be that if Duke has any of her books they are currently checked out).

Do I look 8 pounds lighter?

I pose this as a serious question.  I have been running more and snacking less, but since I see myself in the mirror every day it's a bit hard for me to decide if I really look any different.  My clothes do fit better and the scale says it's true, but I am hard to convince.  Husbands are also not reliable because they will always tell you that you look perfect (which is wonderful to hear :-) ) but it would also be nice to know the truth!  :-P

I think perhaps in my face I've lost a little weight?  But maybe that is just the place where I add and lose weight first.  Either way, I think I should be on track to hit my next milestone weight before we go to Hilton Head for the weekend with Keegan's family in mid-April.  I began keeping track of my weight starting January 14 (144.1) and yesterday (March 22) I was at 135.6, but I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate reading.  I had been hovering around 137 (+/- 0.5 pounds) in the days leading up to our trip (February 20) and for the week after we got back also because it took awhile to get back in the swing of things.  But for the past 2 weeks I've been between 135.5 and 136.5 all the times I've weighed in.  I don't know if that's due to water weight or because my weight is actually changing a little bit every day.  But anyway, I don't have a picture from when I officially started keeping track of my weight, so Christmas is the close I can get to that date.  And then I have a picture from John's defense celebration on Friday.

Alice (and sibs) on December 25, 2010

Alice on March 18, 2011

I tried to at least get images where I have a similar pose but it's still a bit hard to tell.  I guess I'll just have to believe the scale!  I seriously doubt that much weight could be water weight (especially since I drink about 2.5L of water every day anyway) so I could at least be content knowing I've lost some actual weight in there somewhere.

In other news, I have submitted my thesis and now I'm working on preparing my presentation!  It's going slowly because although Monty said to treat it like a lab meeting, the structure of a defense is different.  Should I be presenting the work in terms of the different aims I achieved?  I don't really have a lot of aims exactly because what I've done for the MS is essentially the first 1.5-2 of the 4 aims I have for my Ph.D. and it seems stupid to break the aims down further just for the sake of presenting them.  Things are progressing but I know I'm going to have a lot of challenges ahead this summer to keep up my current pace and to (hopefully) be prepared to prelim by the end of 2011 (or at least before the end of my fourth year).  I'm actually a little scared when I think about how much I have left to do and all the problems I'm sure to face before the end of all this.  But oh well, I guess that's what grad school is about.

March's new dish: Pork chop and potato bake

I made another casserole-type new dish last weekend when one of our friends from undergrad came to hang out with us.  This is another dish that I got from my mother-in-law.  It's hashbrowns, cream of celery soup, a little sour cream, some cheese, and some french fried onions with pork chops baked on top.  It took a lot longer to bake then it should have, but I think I didn't let the hashbrowns thaw enough before starting to bake it.  But the end result was so tasty!

February's second new dish: Pork chops and potatoes

This is not really that exciting, but I had never made pork chops before on our George Foreman and as part of integrating new foods in our diet, I bought a bunch of pork chops the last time they were on sale and froze them.  We didn't do any special seasonings on the chops, just flavored with salt and pepper, but I'd like to do some sort of barbecue sauce next time.  Also featured in this picture are potatoes au gratin, another new dish for me :-)  It looks like we ate no meat, but i made two pork shops for each of us, and only one of them happens to be on this plate when I took the picture.  These chops are a lot thinner than other chops I've had elsewhere (see how teeny they look next to a serving of potatoes that I promise is not mountain-sized!), so it was really like having one normal-sized chop.  Still very tasty though!

February's new dish: Artichoke and feta cheese dip

It's taken me awhile to move my pictures off my camera, but in February I made some artichoke and feta cheese dip for a Super Bowl party we went to.  This is a recipe that I got from my mother-in-law and it is delicious!  It's a good way to get me to eat artichokes, which are not something I would usually eat.  I also really like feta cheese, so it's amazing all around!  I only have pictures of before it was cooked because I cooked it at our host's house, but you can still get the general idea.  We also took pita chips for it to be served with, mmmm.  :-)

It also has pimentos in it, which is explains the little red things in it.  Other ingredients include mayo (I used low fat and it was fine) and shredded parmesan cheese.

Keeping up with my goals

This weekend I opened not one, but two mutual funds :-) That was one of my goals for this year because I was tired of leaving a bulk of my money in a money market account that really earns nothing for me. I couldn't decide on the risk level for my investments, so I just opened two accounts, one that is high risk and one that is a little lower. I want to take some chances to potentially earn good money but at the same time I'd like to know that I can reliably earn a little bit of money so that when we need it (read: when there are babies and houses and new cars involved) it's there. I made sure to leave a few month's salary in the money market though, just in case I/we have an emergency.

With the exception of our vacation, I have been running more than 20 miles a week, but on our trip I did get a lot of exercise walking up some monster hills. I have only done full-body weight lifting 3 times this year, so obviously not keeping up with that goal but I have just been just lifting some free weights at home every few days.

Since being accepted to present in England we have starting planning our trip a little bit. We've booked flights and then we booked the hotel for the conference, but soon we'll need to start booking hotels for the vacation portion of the trip :-)

I've also read several books for pleasure and submitted all the paperwork for getting my Master's this spring! Set a date, booked a conference room and everything! I'm about 75% finished writing my thesis, which is good because it's due in 2.5 weeks, eeee.

My savings at the grocery store have also been really good; in January I averaged 25.4% savings over the month and in February I averaged 29.2% so I'm doing really well in that area. I'm not sure that I'll be able to save $900 this year but I was never sure that was totally feasible.

Anyway, those are the high points for now!

In case you can't tell from my previous post, I've been easily irritated this week :-P Too many things to do and not enough time to do them all! All the snarky things I think come exploding out of me at random, but that doesn't make them any less true. So, I took it down because I was really just venting and that's not what a blog is for anyway, is it?

February pleasure reading

Well this month I read several books that I had already read before but I also read a book I checked out from Duke's "New and Noteworthy" section: Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller.



This book was really interesting because it helped me to understand where all the inspiration for her books came from. There's nowhere to learn to write as eloquently and succinctly as she does, but the book describes her life in Russia pre-Communism and the damage caused to her Jewish family following the conversion of the country to Communism. As it is described in the book, Rand watched her father struggle and over-work to own/manage his own pharmacy and how proud she was of him for his work in achieving his goal. But of course, Communist regimes allow nothing to be privately held because OMG then life just wouldn't be fair! Anyway, the theft of her father's hard-earned business from him deeply affected Rand, even though her ideological beliefs had been formed long before that time.

She led a very interesting life but I think what I find most intriguing is the fact that she always knew she was going to be famous and successful -- I don't understand how some people can just have that much self-confidence but sometimes I wish that I could have it too. She became a very famous author because she knew she would become one. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have consistently sold more than 300,000 copies every year and since the economic downturn, sales of Atlas Shrugged have tripled (let's just hope that people who read it actually understand the dangers she warns about!)

The author dedicated small sections of the biography describing how various books that Rand read somehow found their way into her works. In particular, I enjoyed the time the Heller spent focusing on Rand's view of Robin Hood as a villain because of her belief that "need, not achievement, is the source of all rights" is horribly destructive (and I concur). I can only assume this is why in Atlas Shrugged she incorporates a character that takes back from the poor and gives it to those who actually earned it.

Also, since I read We the Living this year, I enjoyed the sections talking about Rand working to get it published and how it was marketed and well-received by the American people, especially in the 1930s:

It was a novel of crucial topical importance, exposing as both thoughtless and corrupt the liberal-collectivist dream of stripping prerogatives from the wealthy to enhance the welfare of the poor. Such a dream always ended in the destruction of the best -- in other words, of those who asked for no help and simply wanted to be left alone, and therefore had the greatest claim to life.

I would like to check this book out again to reread and I would also like to read Atlas Shrugged again. I'm not sure what March's pleasure reading will be yet, but maybe something will jump out at me today when I return the Rand biography :-)

EDIT: Today when I returned this book I checked out The Queen Mother: The Official Biography by William Shawcross. I just have a thing for (auto)biographies I guess...