Januar 22-25: Writing and editing fiction for a change and therefore not journaling

[rowyn]

Thursday, January 22

I woke groggy and tired, as usual. I could smell cinnamon. Guess it's after 8AM. The aides always toast cinnamon raisin bread for Dad for breakfast. He never does this for himself. I'm not sure if that's because he doesn't like it that much or because it's too much work. When he forages, he usually reheats leftovers or canned soup. 

I checked my phone: 8:30. Well, that's 7.5 consecutive hours of sleep. This is pretty much as good as it gets. I figured I'd get up and get breakfast. 

I said good morning to Dad and Nathan, and measured out one serving of granola and one serving of yogurt, instead of my more recent 1.5 servings. I'm trying to ease back down to normal amounts of food each day, after all the holiday chocolate and eating when I was sad. Still not doing great at it, but I'll make an effort.

I played Race for the Galaxy through breakfast and for a while afterwards. At 9:30, I remembered I hadn't played Time Princess first thing like I usually did, so I played it now and took care of the dailies. 

Today's #WritersCoffeeClub question on fediverse made me go 'ugh'. I have a personal rule for WritersCoffeeClub: "do not complain about or argue with the question while answering the question." I made this rule because most of the questions make me want to argue with them: "this doesn't apply to me, I don't agree with the premise of this question, I am not concerned with this thing and don't understand why other people would be", etc. But arguing with the question is boring, and many of the complaints I have with the question are echoed by other people. I don't need to add to that. So I make an effort to answer without complaint. Even if that means answering a somewhat different question from the exact words of the original. Today's prompt was: #WritersCoffeeClub day 22: Share a recent advancement in your craft of which you are proud.

My response: I'm very happy with my increased ability to make detailed outlines and world-building notes without abandoning the project unfinished.

This is only "recent" in the sense of "several years ago is recent compared to the entire span of my life." But, you know, it's fine. It's reasonably accurate -- outlining is the thing I've noticed improving the most over the course of the last 15 years -- and it's an answer.

Around 11, I thought about napping and went downstairs to use the bathroom and maybe get a cookie. I asked Nathan how it was going. "Good," he said. "I'm...enjoy the challenge of adjusting my...linguistics...I can't figure out how to phrase this."

"Learning to speak New York City?" I suggested.

He looked at me, startled, and didn't say anything for a moment while he digested that. "I hadn't thought of it that way. But you have a point."

"Sue is from New York too. I think that's part of why she and Dad communicate so well."

"I used to live in Massachussets. It's not the same, but I see where you're coming from."

"You'll have to go back to your roots," I said.

"I could. I don't really want to." Nathan looked striken at the prospect. "But I could."

I giggled at him. I got some potato chips for a snack and returned upstairs to eat them and play some more RftG. I did a little journaling, then decided to get my nap after all around noon. I went downstairs again and considered having lunch first, but after potato chips, I wasn't hungry. I went back upstairs and read some of "Seducing the Monster Duke" before dozing off around 12:30PM.

I woke at 2:10 and lazed in bed for a while before lurching upright. I got the leftover potato concoction for late lunch, and ate while playing Race for the Galaxy. I kept playing after I finished eating, until the site crashed around 3:10PM. I kept checking every few minutes because I'd been in a game at the time it went down. At 3:23, I finally got back in, a few minutes after my opponent did. He'd already kicked me from the game. Oh well, it was almost over and I was about 99% likely to lose anyway. It's a shame BGA doesn't handle site crashes for games in progress more gracefully, though. At a minimum, it shouldn't ding players for running out of time after the site crashes. 9_9

In lieu of playing, I caught up on journaling while listening to the last live learn from Monday night's Ong stream. Around 3:50, I got current on my journal and went downstairs to make a Coke float. Lyric convinced me to spend 15 minutes watching her eat, then grumpily went out to the garage because I wasn't watching her eat anymore. 

Back upstairs, I played Time Princess and poked around at music to request from Jonathan Ong tonight. Maybe another Jonathan Young song; I've enjoyed Ong's renditions of those. He's already done three of my favorites but there's several more I love. "Glory or Gold", perhaps. Also thinking of asking for "Why Don't You Do Right?" from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It doesn't feel like an obvious fit for Ong, but I love Ong's rendition of "Feel", and both songs have the same "sultry 30s jazz lounge singer" vibe. Though "Why Don't You Do Right?" leans into the 'sultry' part much harder.

I'd been thinking all day that Dad had poker tonight, but I went to check the exact start time and of course this is the fourth Thursday of the month, not the third. No poker. Next week is the fifth Thursday, which sometimes has poker but not this month. 

I'd heard there might be a nationwide general strike on January 23, but it looks like it's a Minnesota general strike, so I guess I don't have to worry about not going out for food tomorrow night. Or not ordering delivery tomorrow. 

I nuked two bao for Dad for dinner, since I wasn't planning on cooking anything for myself.

Since Dad wouldn't be going to poker this evening, and Ong would be starting stream about when Dad goes to bed, I realized I wouldn't have a good time to exercise. I thought about skipping it, but I often skip exercise on Friday because of going to Wyndsong Manor. Also, I wanted to be able to check off all the boxes on my habit tracker again today. So I spent 25 minutes dancing in my room while watching Hazbin Hotel episode 6. I figured the last two episodes might convince me to exercise for 50+ minutes on the bike tomorrow while Dad was at poker. The bike is considerably more intensive than dancing.

I showered afterwards and returned to my room, where I did a little writing on A Dragon's Secret and a little editing on A Game to You. I still feel like there is no earthly way I will ever finish editing A Game to You because there's just Too Much, but if I chip away at it a little every day, maybe someday it'll no longer feel like Too Much? I think what I really have to do is break down the super-hard parts into smaller parts that feel doable. 

Mostly I dinked around, though, reading social media and playing Time Princess. 

I placed a grocery order at Wal-mart's site. Usually I can get next-day delivery, or in two days at worst. Tonight, the earliest available delivery time was Tuesday. This is how I found out that the winter storm hitting a large chunk of North America would reach down even to affect my area. No accumulation to speak of, but it was expected to be an ice storm, which is worse for both driving and power. So that's not great. I ordered for Tuesday anyway.

Ong's stream started around 9PM. I spent most of the stream just watching, but during some of it, I worked on the Olive portrait. Which I am about ready to declare finished. It's not quite what I wanted, but I don't think I'm gonna make it any better. I also spent some of the stream playing Time Princess.

Ong kicked off the stream by playing the entries to the "Creative Jamboree", which were mostly short pieces of music made by the community. It was fun, but meant that Ong got to the "live learn" part of the stream late, so even though mine was the first priority request, he didn't finish it until 12:30 or so. I went to bed late, around 1AM. I tried to fall asleep right away, but no luck. Probably fell asleep around 1:30 or 1:45AM.

Friday, January 23

I woke at 3:30AM, stared at my phone blearily, briefly considered seeing if Ong was still doing Alinsa's request (she'd bought the third request of the stream), then wisely put my phone down and fell back to sleep.

I woke again at 6:30 and tried to get back to sleep, but did not succeed. At 7AM, I brought up the stream on my phone, then got out of bed. I tried to get Ong's stream to be at least as current on my PC as my phone, even resorting to restarting my computer, but it lagged behind by 10 or 20 seconds no matter what I did. I resigned myself to it being a little laggy and watch at my PC anyway. (Its speakers are far better.)

At 8AM, I heard Dad moving around downstairs, so went to ask him about poker and breakfast. He planned to go to poker and wanted breakfast, so I picked it up from the smoothie cafe and got back around 8:25. I went upstairs to eat and came back downstairs when I finished, at 8:43. Dad had finished breakfast but hadn't gone to dress yet, so I shooed him off to do that and told him to yell for me when he was finished.

At 8:57AM, he still hadn't called up to me. I came back downstairs to put my shoes on. Dad emerged as I went to get my coat, and I motioned him towards the garage. "Get in the car, Dad, I'm just getting my coat."

He continued into the living room anyway. "I have to get my wallet first."

Eventually, we got him to poker on time.

When I came home, I contemplated using the exercise bike, but I was too tired. I returned to watching Jon's stream instead. He was into concert grand time, so I requested "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka (the one with Gene Wilder). Not long after Ong finished my request, I was sleepy enough to lie down for a nap.

I woke at 11:35, considered the time, and climbed out of bed to go straight to the exercise bike. I figured I had time for episode 7 of Hazbin Hotel before Dad got home. 

I was correct; I was a few minutes into episode 8 when Dad returned home. After Dad settled back into the recliner, I asked if he wanted the remote back. "No, you can watch ... whatever this is. I don't need the TV," he said. He played with his tablet and glanced in bemusement at the program from time to time. As the final episode of the season, it was focused on the action and wasn't particularly offensive, though I'm pretty sure it was completely inscrutable to Dad.

When it finished, I returned the remote to Dad. "Ah, now I can watch something that makes sense," he said. "Like Midsommer Murders."

"Yep!"

I showered and went back upstairs, where I sat at my PC in a stupor for a while. I later lay down in an attempt at another nap, but I didn't manage to fall asleep. I checked in with Sophrani about tonight's plans, and we settled on the usual time and planned to go to Asian Harbor. 

I checked the mail in the afternoon. We'd gotten two notices from the IRS that M had asked me to photograph and email to him, because he didn't know what they were. They were just 'we've revoked authorization from [person] to view your tax information'; I assumed [person] was the tax accountant M had used to prepare their taxes for a few years. But I photographed and emailed them anyway, and M confirmed that my assumption was correct.

Around 4PM, I did a little writing and then a little drawing, so I could check them off. I tried to do a little editing, but by then it was after 5PM and I felt like it was too few minutes to count. I went downstairs at 5:20 and got dressed, then gave Dad a hug and told him I'd be back late tonight. I took Dad's car and listened to the new Serious Trouble episode en route.

Traffic was light, especially for a Friday night; it barely slowed me down. I arrived almost 20 minutes early, and hung out in the Wyndsong front room while we waited for Envoy to arrive. Kage remembered to give me the printout for the plate agency, happily.

He arrived on time -- perhaps the first time both of us have arrived on time. (I've often been late, sometimes just by a few minutes, because of timing issues and/or Mom, and the few times I've been on time, Envoy was delayed by something.) But Envoy marched past us, saying something about excrutiating pain, and went to the living room while Sophrani and I trailed behind, concerned and puzzled. Envoy sat on the loveseat and took off his shoe and sock to scratch and massage the sole. He explained that his foot has started doing this thing, a few times now, where it becomes intensely and painfully itchy. It doesn't respond to creams or cold packs, which sucks, but he said it was usually relatively brief. After several minutes, it mostly subsided. We waited another ten or fifteen minutes to make sure it wouldn't return, because for obvious reasons this is a lot more annoying when you're driving than if you're just sitting around. Kage offered deliberately unhelpful suggestions, as he is prone to do, and we tickled him in retaliation, as we are prone to do. 

We had dinner at Asian Harbor, as planned. Kage joked about going to the grocery store to look at the empty shelves -- fear of the weekend ice storm had cleaned out the store he and Sophrani had been to a day or two ago. But they didn't need anything, so we didn't.

For videos, we planned to watch a few episodes of Spy X Family and a few of Punch Princess, since both have 20-30 minute episodes.  We ended up watching like seven episodes of Spy X Family, because we watched two that were short and episodic, and then the next several were all part of the same long story arc and ended on cliffhangers. "We! Want! Closure!" It was 11:30 when the story arc finally resolved. Phew. I think we would've given up and continued it next week if that episode hadn't resolved it. 

Happily, I'd done almost all my Time Princess dailies before arriving. I checked before leaving that I'd finished everything and completed the one thing I'd neglected, then drove home. I got home after midnight, read a bit in bed, and went to sleep.

Saturday, January 24

I woke much too early, like maybe 6AM, and couldn't get back to sleep. Wal-Mart had texted at 5AM that they'd cancelled my Tuesday delivery for Unspecified Reasons. The soonest available delivery was now Friday. Ugh. At 7AM, I gave up on sleep, got up, and put on Ong's stream. Around 8:00AM, I went downstairs, took a picture of the grocery list on my tablet, and headed for the grocery store -- Harris Teeter, not Wal-Mart. I figured I could pick up groceries, then order breakfast while I checked out. Harris Teeter and Tropical Smoothie Cafe are in the same plaza. I brought my tablet because it has the cafe's app. My phone is ancient and I don't install apps on it anymore. The tablet proved nicer for keeping the grocery list up, since it doesn't have the screen time out, and I could leave it in the upper compartment of the shopping cart and still be able to read it. 

The visit to Harris Teeter was unexpectedly pleasant. A parking space was open right in front of the store as I pulled up, so I took it. Finding things in the store was a bit of a challenge, since I don't pick up groceries if I can help it. Ricotta cheese was not with cheese, which didn't surprise me; it was in the "culture" section with yogurt, which made sense except that I thought it would be somewhere near the dairy and it wasn't. It didn't take long to track down, though. I missed the bread aisle entirely and ended up asking the person who was stocking bread in the bakery where the prepackaged bread was. "Aisle 4," she said, "If we still have any."

Most of the shelves had been stocked normally, but as with the usual storm experience, bread was largely cleared out. They had a loaf of the seeded rye bread Dad likes, though. I got a loaf of wheat bread for myself. They were out of cinnamon raisin. 

There were a few things I'd've liked to get extras of -- Harris Teeter has a type of ice cream that Walmart doesn't carry and that I like better -- but with the storm coming up, I didn't want to get frozen goods that might thaw during a prolonged power outage. So I restrained myself. I didn't worry as much about pantry or even refrigerator items, since refrigerator items would stay reasonably cold just by being put outside in the shade. 

At checkout, I gave my shopping cart to the cashier and opened my tablet to order breakfast for Dad and myself. The cashier and the bagger managed to ring up and bag my entire cart in less time than it took me to place the order. Which just involved a few clicks because I was re-ordering my last order. I joked that I took longer to pay than they took to ring it up. 

As I headed out, the bagger ran after me. "I think you left this?" He handed my phone to me.

"Thank you!" I'd been about to check for it but it was still nice not to have to turn back.

Outside, I loaded groceries into my car, looked for the nearest cart corral, and realized it was the one in front of the store. Before I could cross the pavement to it, a store employee walked towards me, arms out and motioning to me with a big grin. "I'll take it!"

I laughed and pushed it to him. By this point, I felt like I was in a commercial for Harris Teeter, full of helpful employees. 

The smoothies were ready when I reached the cafe, but I had to wait a minute or two for the food. No biggie.

At home, I delivered breakfast to Dad, who'd gotten up and made coffee while I was out, but as expected had not made himself breakfast yet. I put away the groceries, then took myself and my breakfast upstairs to eat while watching Jonathan Ong.

After I finished breakfast, I was running out of steam (given how early I'd woken up), so I took a nap.

I spent most of the day listening to Ong and editing A Game to You. I think I took a second nap, too. I thought about drawing or writing, but I wasn't in the mood for either and figured actually making progress on a thing was more important than being able to check a bunch of boxes.

Around 1 or 2PM, I started making potatoes. I told Dad, "I'm making a late lunch or early dinner or whatever, would you like some?" and of course he did. I'd thought there were enough potatoes to make it twice more, but there were only 11 left, one of which had sprouted. I threw out the sprouted one, washed 7 and got to my usual level, and figured I might as well wash the last 3. Once I'd peeled and cut them up, they filled the casserole dish. Which meant there wasn't room to add the broccoli, cheese, and crab. Oops. I baked the potatoes for 50-ish minutes, then divided some into a separate dish so I could add the other stuff on top before baking it for the last 10 minutes. I think we ate around 3:30 or 4PM.

I also had Dad sign the lost-or-stolen form, photographed it, and emailed it with the registration to the plate agency. We'll see if they still want anything else from us.

Telnar called around 4PM, which I noticed around 5PM. I've turned off the ringer on my phone so it can return to being seen and not heard. Although what I should do is leave the ringer on but enable Do Not Disturb for my usual sleeping hours, because I'll still be getting the occasional appointment-related call for me or Dad.

I called Telnar back and paced in my room to get a little exercise, since I didn't feel like using the exercise bike anyway. Telnar told me about his almost-plan to go to the Galapagos islands this weekend. He'd looked into what last-minute travel plans he could make to escape the winter storm. The Galapagos cruise had told him they'd get back to him within 24 hours, but he only had 17 hours before he had to fly to the port. After 17 hours, he hadn't heard back: so much for that possibility. He's still thinking about doing that, however. And also about going to Antartica, which requires a week of lead time during their summer. Which is pretty good for a place with as few tourists as Antartica! 

We talked about the storm, which was supposed to dump a lot of snow on Telnar -- whose area, like mine, seldom gets snow. My area was supposed to get an ice storm. Dad and I didn't plan to go anywhere this weekend and Monday would be above freezing and sunny. So we'd be fine as long as the ice storm wasn't bad enough to cause mass power outages.

Telnar and I also talked about GLP-1 drugs (of which Ozempic is the most famous). I used to think these kinds of drugs wouldn't help me, because my problem with overeating isn't "I'm hungry" but "I want to eat even though I'm not hungry." But my new and improved understanding of "appetite" as distinct from "hunger" has made me realize that, yeah, appetite suppressants might have an impact on my overeating habits. Not that I want to use a GLP-1 drug. My current weight doesn't inconvenience or concern me. I gained several pounds over the holidays and after Mom's death, but my weight has overall been pretty stable since 2019. Maybe taking a pill or getting injections for the rest of my life would let me lose 60 pounds and return to my all-time low adult weight, but it doesn't feel like it matters enough. 

I talked about the pending storm with Dad, as well. We have gas heat, but neither of us know if the furnace has an electric starter. I expect it does, though, which means if the power goes out the heat goes out anyway. Sigh. 

"My usual plan for a long-term power outage is to get in the car and drive until I see lights, then checking into a hotel," Dad said.

"That works well if your neighborhood is out," I said, "But when an ice storm takes out the whole city, all the hotels with power tend to fill up fast."

"When that happens, I just keep driving until I get to an area with a different utility company," Dad said.

I wasn't sure how well "drive into an unaffected area" would work with a storm this size, but there didn't seem much point in worrying about it at this point. There might not be a power outage at all. If the weather was just a little warmer or a little colder than anticipated, it wouldn't even be an ice storm, and an inch of rain or snow wouldn't be a threat to the power.

Ong's stream wrapped up 'early' by Ong standards, at 11 hours 13 minutes. 

I switched to watching Coffee's stream, though I continued to poke at edits rather than writing. Late in the evening, I did a little writing in my journal, just to get in my 4thewords streak for the day. I stopped in on XyzzySqrl's stream to watch Grim Fandango for a bit, too.

I ended the day with my usual Time Princess. This week's Time Princess minigame is "Kitty Kitchen", a mahjongg-inspired game, where you have a giant board of layered tiles and remove them by matching three at a time, with the goal of clearing all tiles from the board. I like the style of game, but it's challenging and time-consuming, so often I don't bother playing it when it's up. This week, I decided to play some of it. I have two approaches to the game, when I do play it:

- Play until I unlock a little pile of boosters, then use that pile to win a game that I'm doing well at. Winning a game on one day guarantees a few boosters on the next, so once I win my first game, winning a game every day becomes relatively easy.

- Play the maximum number of ads to get and use as many free boosters as possible, so I can unlock the max rewards for using boosters.

The first method is time-consuming but I am playing a game I enjoy during that time. The second approach involves So Many Ads. SO MANY. I usually play ads while sitting at my computer, so it just involves pressing a button to start it, ignoring the device while the ad plays, then pressing a button to stop it. But with the number of ads the second approach requires, even doing that becomes burdensome. I did it once or twice, but now I'm like 'I'm rich and if I want something, I can just buy it. I don't need to watch ads until I get it without paying.'

I don't need to play games until I get it without paying, either, but I enjoy playing the games so that part is reasonable.

Anyway, I have decided to never use the 'max number of ads' approach again, but I've been having fun playing the minigame for its rewards.

I think I went to sleep around 1AM, but I'm not sure.

Sunday, January 25

I woke a time or three too early like usual, but I managed to fall back to sleep each time, and didn't wake up for the day until almost 10AM. I played a bunch of Time Princess, and eventually got out of bed and had granola for breakfast.

Around 2PM, I had some leftover potato concoction. After lunch, I went, "Eh, I have done zero useful things so far today. I might as well update the TARDIS spreadsheet." I hadn't updated it since mid-December. SilverGrace had been keeping an eye out for patterns and people who were consistently under, but it's always nice to have an actual weekly average for everyone. 

I made a Coke float and was not terribly diligent about updating the spreadsheet, doing some other stuff in between. E, Alltoseek's husband, called me to ask how things were going with the plate agency. He offered to pay the $50, but I told him not to worry about it. He also explained why he couldn't come at the same time Alltoseek did in March -- boarding the dogs is no longer feasible because there's this disease-screening process that makes it cost like $1000 if they want to board all three dogs. So instead one of them has to stay home with the dogs. He offered to come out by himself on a different weekend. I like E, but I don't know him well, and I feel bad being the host when I know most of what I'm gonna end up doing is hiding in my room. Even when Eliyahu was here, I spent most of their visit playing with my computer while Eliyahu sat next to me and played with theirs. It's not like we actually interacted for several hours a day. I am not a quality-time person. o_o;;;

I kept in an eye on the weather. The 'wintery mix' was very fine, pretty much invisible when it was falling. The backyard accumulated a smattering of white. The sidewalks and street had a thin but uniform covering of white. In mid-afternoon, I was startled by how pristine it looked; I expected at least a few cars and people walking dogs to have disturbed it. I went outside to take a picture of it, planning to illustrate the dread of snow in this area. Instead, I immediately realized that it didn't look pristine because no one had been out. It looked pristine because it was nearly solid ice. My feet didn't leave an impression on it. When I went out to the street, I could make out the very faint impression of car tires, but even cars could barely dent the stuff. I was glad I didn't have to go out in it.

At 5:10PM, I got a call from Lori at Always Best Care.

"Hi!" I said brightly. "I've been meaning to text you." 

"Oh! What's going on?"

"I just wanted to let you know that it's okay if Nathan can't make it in tomorrow," I said. "Which I expect is why you're calling me."

She chuckled. "Yes ma'am it is." 

"So this is a 'he definitely won't be here' and not 'maybe, depending on conditions', right?" I thought there was some chance the roads would be driveable tomorrow morning; there was a chance of rain, and that might melt off the ice if it happened. Still, it didn't look promising.

"Yes ma'am, he won't make it. I've had to call his other clients as well."

I thanked her and got off the phone.

None of my neighbors put out their trash cans. Of course, all my neighbors had put out the trash on MLK JR day even though it was cancelled then, so I wasn't sure how much to trust this signal. I went to the city website to see if the trash schedule had changed, but the webpage for it said it hadn't been updated since last year. I checked the community forum, and under a post titled "Trash collection has NOT been cancelled", I found a half-dozen replies saying it had been cancelled. Including an excerpt from the city webpage. Apparently the city webpage had a cancellation notice, just not on the trash collection page specifically. I scooped the litter boxes but left the trash cans inside.

At 8PM, I joined Coffee's stream. At 8:30PM, I finally finished updating the last 7 days of performance into the TARDIS spreadsheet. I let SilverGrace know who was low, and messaged the weak performers myself.

I watched XyzzySqrl's stream a bit more, but not closely because I was also trying to catch up on the last few days of entries in my journal. Also, at 10PM, I decided to use the exercise bike after all. I put on "The Dragon Prince", which I last watched in ~2019, when there were only three seasons out. They'd added a subtitle to it, which made me think it was a spinoff from the original. But no, the whole thing was now "The Dragon Prince: Mystery of Aaravos", and had 7 seasons. 

For once, I watched the recap, because I sure didn't remember the first 3 seasons that well. The recap was several minutes by itself. I watched season 4 episode 1. When it finished, I'd been biking for 35 minutes and figured that was good enough. 

While I showered, I thought about the outline I'd been brainstorming, and came up with a resolution I liked for it. So after the shower, I started writing that down. At 11:50, I had not quite finished, and suddenly realized how late it was. I stopped writing to hurry through some Time Princess dailies. Afterwards, I returned to wrap up my thoughts on the idea. Then I went back to Time Princess to play Kitty Kitchen for a while. I didn't get to bed until after 1AM, and fell asleep just before 2AM.

 

Comments

[tuftears]

I do love it when I figure out a capstone for an outline. Everything snaps into place and I feel so eager to get to writing it. ^.^

Yay writing and editing!

Now that I actually have a book out, maybe I should start poking at WritersCoffeeClub... I don't even know how it works except that I see you and C. Stross posting with that tag now and then. Is one expected to follow a tag or something?

(I have also, out of curiosity, looked to see if this qualifies mew for SFWA membership and the answer is that I have to sell $100 of books to qualify for associate membership, $1000 for full, so that'll be a bit of a while.)

As far as weight goes, I think exercise might make as much difference as diet, or possibly even more for health reasons... But I do have the luxury of exercise equipment at home that makes it very convenient, as opposed to having to go somewhere. *shudders* Leaving the house, so traumatic!