Ah, January. Resolutions and Random Thoughts

Ah, the pace of life has slowed again at work. We're all setting things back to rights, giving things plenty of spit and polish, reviewing what we did right and what we could do better for next year, and basically getting ready to introduce the shopping public to spring. The Enchanted Bathing Suit Forest has already reappeared at the front of women's clothing and the flip flops are about to replace those few pairs of slippers in the bins in the shoe department.

Here it is well into January, and I'm just now up for air long enough to think about things like what I'd like to work on in 2007. I'd like to keep losing weight. While everyone is bemoaning their holiday weight gains, I actually lost 7-10 lbs. (I'm not really sure, but that's as accurate as I can be) during the holidays. Since I am not 100% sure of my highest shipping weight, I think that actually puts me at somewhere between 20-25 lbs. since August. Don't worry, there's still plenty of me to go around and I am far from in danger of being blown away by a strong gust! But I can tell in the way my clothes fit, even baggy things like nightgowns, jeans and sweatshirts, and people have begun to notice. Most of them think I've done something to my hair, but I know they are just seeing the change in my face.

I attribute a good part of my weight loss during the holidays to running at full-bore at work for 8-10 hrs. a day five days a week. The other part I attribute to finally seeming to have internalized the whole concept of "enough". I ate pretty much whatever I wanted to, including things like eggnog with bourbon, Christmas cookies and candy, pizza, subs and potato chips, but I think I rarely overindulged in any of those things without counterbalancing them somewhere else in my day, and even overindulgence itself was pretty rare. I was able to stop at normal and recommended portions of most things. I had an entire bag of Hershey mint kisses in my house for a whole month. I even forgot the partially open bag was there for a week. I'd eat 3-5 at a time. And that was enough on the occasions I was actually in the mood for them.

I'll admit that I mostly cook at home, making leftovers serve for lunches. I keep canned soups and a couple of light frozen entrees in the freezer (although I am an inveterate label reader and will buy certain Stouffer's red box entrees because they are just about the same as some light frozen things in terms of general nutritional value and higher quality) for a pinch. But even if I don't have leftovers or a frozen thing, I am fortunate to know what my options are at work over at Food Avenue and out on the shelves. I'm lucky enough to have a well-stocked pantry that ensures I can get something relatively healthy on the table relatively quickly, even when I get home late or have a short time between shifts. I don't think I could live nearly so well without my Trader Joe's frozen veggies, like haricot verts, soycutash and sugar snaps. Rotisserie chickens, especially when you're shopping at midnight and can get the ones sitting in the deli case that have been marked down a couple bucks, are a godsend. And low carb freaks take heed that due to holiday budget constraints, there were several weeks where my diet was heavy on the carbs (mac and cheese, tuna noodle casserole, cheesy taters, potato soup, and bean soup weeks spring to mind). For exercise, I walked a good 2-3 miles daily, just at work, and I also did things like push shopping carts manually (I can push up to 7 at a time) on a regular basis and climb up and down ladders in the stockroom to help our backroom with the massive amounts of pulls they had on their plate. I jokingly referred to it all as the "GSTL Total Holiday Fitness Program". It worked.

Of course, with the slower pace at work, there are a few things I'm making a more conscious effort at monitering. I'm avoiding the candy that is almost always at hand even now. Hershey kisses and those little Dove chocolates. Not allowed to mindlessly graze them. I'm craving salads and soups, so those are appearing on my menus more frequently. I try to have a nice hot cup of tea almost every evening or at some point in the day (and, yes, it is one of the few things that I use real sugar for). Adding more things like mushrooms and other veggies in things like beef stroganoff and cutting back on the amount of meat. Reacquainting myself with tofu, which I actually like. I make a decent ma po tofu, which is one of my favorite Chinese dishes. Trying to have meatless meals at least once or twice a week. I plan to pump up my exercise ball and clear a space in the living room, so that I can roll around on it a few times a week. Plan to add some upper body free weights (I've got them sitting in the living room, after all!) and do things like squats and lunges, too, to work the lower body. These will all be reasonable and attainable habits to either keep up or acquire.

There really isn't much more that I can think of. Change for me is becoming more and more an organic process. I find what needs to change or improve usually makes itself apparent, regardless of my plans or my best intentions. If I focus on anything, it is being open to the input of the universe, so that I can hear the directions for where I'm supposed to go and trusting that all things will unfold as they were meant to in good time.

That Championship Season

In the immortal words of Dr. Zachary Smith, of "Lost In Space," "Oh, the pain, the pain!" I speak of last night's BCS national title game. Ohio State vs. Florida. For we Buckeyes, it was humiliating, inexcusable and just plain god-awful. Now, I'll confess that I actually conked out around 7:30 and didn't awake until 12:30, when it was all over except the shoutin' and the cryin'. I watched part of the press conference. "Shell-shocked" was the word that came to mind watching Jim Tressel, Troy Smith and the other players, but I was still impressed by what I saw. Everyone could have sat there and made all kinds of excuses. Everybody could have sat there and cried. What everyone did while I was watching was respond with "the better team won today" and "we weren't on our game". Troy Smith tried to pick up the burden of the loss, and his head coach wouldn't let him. Jim Tressel figured it was more his burden and that of his coaching staff. My heart went out to everyone sitting on that dais, and to all those in the locker room.

I'm sure there will be plenty of post-mortem on this one, and that there will be lessons learned and taken to heart. At the end of the day, you win 'em as a team and you lose 'em the same way. No individual can take credit for the wins and no one gets to bear the burden of the losses alone. I am going to take the position that you learn more about a man's character and about a team's character from defeat than you do from their victories.

I happen to think that it was Florida's day. They came in underdogs, and they knew it and they had something to prove. They wanted it badly enough, they played well enough when we didn't, and the stars and the planets aligned to give them their day in the sun. Florida peaked on Monday night and became more than the sum of their parts. Among the comments I read on a story about the game in the Akron Beacon Journal someone wrote, "To my Buckeyes, remember that the sun can't always shine. Sometimes it has to rain, but as a wise man once said, 'If it don't rain, we don't eat.' Keep your chin up. We'll be back." Naturally, there were others wanting to eat the boys alive and fire Jim Tressel immediately, but most were relatively sane and rational and in the vein of "every dog has its day".

I don't know Jim Tressel, only what I've seen of the man in the local papers and on local TV, but I do believe that beneath that reserved demeanor beats the heart of a true competitor, and that he is probably hurting, angry, confused and embarrassed today. My take on what happened? Coach had a really, really, really bad day at work. The kind where nothing you touch and nothing you do doesn't go completely awry. The kind where you wish you could just go back to bed and start all over again. I think, that like most of us, he got blindsided by that and never saw it coming. Unlike most of us, however, Jim Tressel got to have his really, really bad awful day on national television where we could see how utterly confused and flummoxed he was. We saw as genuinely human a face as we're ever likely to see from such a private and reserved person. We're not used to seeing that kind of human frailty from "The Vest." We've come to expect that he's the guy who'll come up with the answers and the plays that result in another victory. And Monday night just wasn't his day to be that guy. Happens to the best of us, and being the head football coach of nationally ranked Big Ten school doesn't make you immune. So let's not howl for blood and let's cut the man slack on that point. If anyone can figure out what went wrong and figure out how to set the ship right again, it's Jim Tressel.

At the end of the day, it was disappointing at best to be subjected to such an unholy ass-whuppin'. Winning is always going to be more fun than losing. But one game, even if it is the national title game, does not a season make. A nineteen game winning streak is nothing to be ashamed of, and no one can ever take the sense of team pride and togetherness that it took to earn that winning streak away from these boys. Maybe the loss puts the fire in the belly for the boys who are coming up and who'll come into their own next season. I don't know. But I do know that it is always easy to be gracious when you win and when things roll your way. The measure of a man and of a team is what you do when things don't go your way. That is what defines a championship season.