The Quest to Have a Cool-Looking Blog

Aaaaaahhhhhhh! I have just spent twenty minutes trying to find another look for my blog. I want a background that depicts a quest. I found a few that might work, but I couldn't get the colors of the tabs and fonts the way I wanted them. So, now I'm on a quest to find the right background. I want one that depicts Don Quixote and Pancho Sanza. I'm reading about them in my L214 Classic Literature class. Don Quixote (or D.Q. for short) goes off on all these make-believe adventures and has a great time doing it. He goes on quests. So, wouldn't it be cool to have a background of them? Yes, I think so, too. Onward!

The Quest to Post Better Pictures

What a day! If I were a geek, I'd be in geek heaven!

As part of my job at IUPUI, I write a newsletter for the Staff Council. I am getting ready to take the newsletter in a different direction and wanted to learn how to manipulate photos to have them appear more sharply on the page, so I registered for a Adobe CS5 Photoshop class. Today was the day of the class. I have to say Adobe makes their products look difficult with all the gadgets appearing on the screen, but they also make the gadgets do some incredible things. Once you figure out what all the icons do, a whole world of imagination opens. I have some practicing to do before I can say I have the hang of it, but I have a better sense of what to do the next time a picture comes to me that isn't quite bright enough.

You know how celebrities seem to look so good in pictures? Well, thanks to Photoshop, we can all look like celebrities! At the close of the class, the instructor showed us how pictures are manipulated to make everyone look spiffy and thin. I'm not sure why I'm on a quest to lose weight. I can just Photoshop me into looking beach ready!

I also learned about OneNote in Microsoft Office today. I've used the product before, but it wouldn't sync from one device to another. If I can't see notes I've written at work for a project on other devices, how is that supposed to help? Thanks to a new iPhone app, the problem is solved. OneNote has an app that allows you to sync your notes from your computer to your phone and vice versa. Now if I just had an iPad, I could see my notes in larger type! Are you reading this honey? An iPad would sure make a nice birthday present!

Perhaps I'll Photoshop some pictures and post them to this blog. The quest now is to find the picture to alter! Stay tuned!

A New Quest!

Where have you been? That's usually the question I ask my friend, Becky, when she hasn't blogged for a while. Oh, I've been here. But, I thought my blog was lame, so I stopped writing. Now, I'm taking a class at IUPUI for my bachelor's degree and one requirement is to write a blog. The goal is to find my e-voice.

I decided to take the class for a few reasons.

1. It's a class I can take on-line.
2. It sounded interesting on a personal level but also would work quite well for my job since I do a lot of writing.
3. It meets a requirement for my degree.

By taking this class, I expect to get a better understanding of how to find my e-voice for the areas in which I write: personal e-mail, professional e-mail, Facebook (both personal and professionally), business correspondence, and for the Staff Council Newsletter. My writing skills on a professional level aren't bad, and I understand when to be business-professional or business-casual in my writing. My obstacle is learning to write more creatively for the Newsletter. I want to be casual in my writing -- like I am speaking to the person who is reading the articles -- yet, I need to be less casual and more to the point. I hope to overcome the obstacle by finding the e-voice required for that genre. Is it okay to be funny, yet informative? Would it be better to be more professional in getting the word out, or does the audience need less formality and a little more informality?

I will be exploring Second Life as part of the class requirements. We get to create our own avitars by giving ourselves a certain voice. We can be either just how we are, or we can create one to look and act how we would want to appear to others. I'm going with the latter. I want to be in good shape, wear fashionable clothes instead of the boring ones I wear now, perhaps wear some cool sunglasses, and drive a cool car. Stay tuned as I explore who I want this second voice to be like.

I am not going to change the title of my blog. It will remain Facsimilee's Quest. I'm still on a quest; I'm just focusing on a different type of quest now.

Like Don Quixote, be Sancho Panza and join me on my quests for adventure and enlightenment.

Cheers!

Quest Way-In

I lost weight this past week!  Woo hoo!  1.5 pounds.  Not much, but it's better than nothing or gaining.  I set my calorie intake to be for 1.5 pounds a week.  Not bad.  The Husband is doing well, too.

Quest: Day 6

I've made it two days using the Lose It app.  I LIKE it!  I'm a little under my calories for the day, so I took a small (two bites) piece of leftover birthday cake.  Hey, it's better than a whole piece, right?  Right.

The Washington Post had a funny food calculator for seeing how many calories you will eat on Thanksgiving Day.  Try it....you'll be surprised.  I went one year without dressing, and I swore I'd never do it again.  So, I'm going to skip something else that I would choose and have some.  I'll probably not have the gravy, so I'm praying the turkey doesn't get dry after it's put on the table.  Why is it that you carve a nice juicy turkey, but by the time it hits the table, it's drier than my grass was this summer?

Well, on to day three of the Lose It app and watching my weight.  I lost weight when I weighed this morning, so it must be working!

Grade:  A

Quest: Day 5

Hallelujah!  My husband has joined me in losing weight.  It is so much easier to do it with someone else.  He's so diligent about it, too.  We are both using the iPhone app called "Lose It."  It keeps track of what we eat and the calories we consume.  I've done pretty good today.  I think if have less than 20 calories to consume before midnight, but I'm not going to use them.  I had to have a Caesar Salad today instead of the planned cottage cheese and pineapple.  It was left over from last week and went bad.  All in all, I did pretty good.  I'm avoiding going downstairs because there are cookies, cake, and hors d'oeuvres left over from Girl Child's 25th Birthday Bash.  Cake is my favorite food group, so I must stay away from the kitchen!

As you can probably guess, I've missed some days writing things down in my food journal.  I started AGAIN today using the Lose It program.  You have to journal in order to know how many calories you've consumed.

I almost blew it this morning when I was real sleepy.  The invisible dude on my left shoulder (he wears red and carries a pitch fork) told me to go downstairs and get one of those huge cookies from the food wagon.  I went down there, with the guise of needing to break a twenty, but the invisible dude on my right shoulder (he wears white and has wings) made it possible for all the donuts and cookies to be sold!  So, I trudged on back to my office and congratulated myself for not being able to go through with the planned purchase.

Grade:  A-

Thanksgiving is just three days away.  We're in charge of making the desserts.  AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

Quest: Day 4

Yesterday went pretty well, I think.  I woke up this morning feeling a little bit lighter and a lot more confident in my ability to take the weight off slowly.  It's cold outside and it gets dark by 6:00, so walking at night is out of the question.  My pedometer isn't getting high marks!

What did I eat today?

• 7:15 a.m. Total cereal with milk and dried cranberries
• 9:20 a.m. Sweet for the Day:  three squares of chocolate with nuts
• 12:15 p.m. Cottage cheese and pineapple, pretzels, one piece of rye bread, one slide of deli corned beef, and one piece of low-fat cheese
• 6:00 p.m. Trailmix (handfull) while I cooked dinner.
• 6:30 p.m. Dirty Rice with ground turkey

Grade:  B+

I could have eaten less dinner.  I should have a snack in the afternoon, but I've been too busy at work to stop.  I have yogurt and Del Monte fruit cups in my fridge, but I've not had one since last week.

Prince Williams got engaged to Kate Middleton today.  The next year will be fun watching the smut magazines take pictures of Kate like they did Princess Diana.  I just hope they are a little more kind to her considering their constant badgering led to the Princess's death.  Can't wait to see the wedding dress!

Back to food -- I think this blog and recording what I eat is helping me.  I don't want to lie to anyone who might read this blog, so I am trying to keep eating to a dull roar!