Monday, January 12, 2015

Walking


















I've decided to choose a word for 2015.  I've never done this before, but I'm at a place in my life right now that it makes sense for me.

Intentional

I'm going to do my best to remember this word as daily as possible, and when I stray to gather my thoughts and actions back to it.

After my birthday passed early this month, and after a long few weeks of holidays and being cozy and lazy and eating delicious food that was not anywhere near my usual allergen-free diet, plus a three-week stand-off against the flu, I was feeling pretty gross.  Not necessarily about myself or how I looked, but I physically felt bloated and full and lethargic.  Now that I know what it feels like to have my body healthy, this felt bad, so I've been working at cleaning it up again.  I am nothing if not incredibly spontaneous and thorough, so by "cleaning it up" I mean "completely overhauling it as of early last week."  Which is a shock to the system and pretty intense for the first couple of days, but now it's starting to feel normal to me again.  Which is good, because I feel good again.  I feel healthy, which is the goal.

I've been out walking with Nibbler a lot, and using my new camera (Happy Birthday to me!)  So far I've mostly shot in Auto, but I'm starting to play around with the settings a little bit.  And I have to say, I LOVE it!  I'm generally a Nikon girl (my DSLR is a Nikon, and all my other point and shoots have been Nikons,) but the Sony RX100 is ah-mazing!  I did try to stay with Nikon for this one, but after having the Coolpix S9700 for a week, I just could not make it work.  It is a good size, but the shooting capabilities are severely lacking.  There is no macro feature (which I actually use a lot) and the photos in low light were blurry, and super noisy since I had to jack up the ISO to make it bright enough to see anything.  Now, I'm not a professional photographer, so I'm certain that someone who knows more could probably make that camera work--it's nice enough.  But it just wasn't for me.  This Sony, on the other hand, makes my heart sing!  It's beautiful, heavy, feels nice in my hands, shoots BEAUTIFULLY in automatic, is easy to navigate, and fits well in my tiniest purses.  But, it's $500 (that was on sale--normally $600) compared to the $300 Nikon Coolpix, so of course you get what you pay for.

As an aside, I HATE spending that much money on myself.  BUT, this little camera makes me so happy!  I've had my DSLR for over six years, and I use it very often--I'd use it even more if it was just a smidge smaller.  I have lugged that thing through Europe, Mexico, and the States, and I think it will remain my favorite, but this "point and shoot" (really?!  It's like a tiny DSLR) is so much easier to haul around.  So far it's seen daily use, and I imagine it will be used all the time.  Plus, I'll have it for years provided it doesn't break.  So, overall the price--and myself--are worth it.

Anyway, we've been walking a lot.  We are lucky to live close enough to the Puget Sound that we can walk to it (though the walk home is really steep and not for the faint of heart--I had to carry my poor old girl the last two blocks up the hill!) And it's been super foggy, which I love taking photos in.

Also, just to keep myself accountable, I'm still on my weight loss journey--as of this morning, I've lost 65 pounds.  That's equivalent to my oldest child holding my fat pug.  I walk at least five days a week, and go to Zumba at least twice a week.  I can outrun my eight year-old, and go 23 miles on my bicycle in one day.  Yay me!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I wish I could remember to carry my camera as much as you do - I end up using my phone most of the time - even for the pictures for my blog. It's just so convenient. Not that transferring the pictures to my computer and doing a little clean up takes that long...I guess I'm just lazy. :)

Jessie Keating said...

I'm lazy too! But I carry it around with me (I found an awesome little hard-sided case that fits the extra battery!) It's the transferring onto my computer that I find time-consuming.