Author: meisaj

Living in the Cleve

Daily Drawings

meisajDaily Life

05162011AJCI’ve ignored uploading Daily Drawings for a long time.

Since roughly March 2011.  I’ve kept up with them for the most part.  I fall behind when I’m busy, but make up drawings when I’m not.

I spent today scanning in the rest of my 2011 drawings.  And spent the rest of my time tonight uploading a bunch of them.  I uploaded April 2011, May 2011, June 2011 and all of July 2011 on my Daily Drawings page.

Check Them Out Here

I’ll work tomorrow on uploading some more to my Daily Drawings page.  I’m hoping to get all of 2011 uploaded soon, and when I get back from Delaware I’ll work on scanning in and uploading  2012 Daily Drawings during the rest of the summer.

Who knows… maybe I’ll get back into scanning on a daily basis.

Food Tracking

meisajDaily Life

01282011AJC

When I decided to work on getting in some sort of summer shape to go along with my biking I started to do push ups and sit ups again.

I did them for about four months last year (September – December) before winter killed my ambition.  I started at two sets of 25 push ups and 2 sets of 30 sit ups and increase it every week based on how I feel.  I only do them during the week, and take weekends off.  This last week I did sets of 30 push ups and sets of 40 sit ups.  Feels good.

But in addition to that I started tracking my food again.  This too is something I did in the past to help me be aware of what I eat.  I’m not one for diets.  I just can’t picture restricting myself to any degree.  But keeping track of what I eat helps me subconsciously make better decisions about what I eat.  I don’t track calories, portions, or anything like that.  If I feel like putting small or large down to describe portions, or know exactly what I ate then I’ll put it down.  For example, a kid at work gave me ten French Fries the other day.  Why ten, I don’t know.  But I put ten down.

Anyways, I keep it online.  I do all my food tracking with google calendar, its easy to enter from my phone and only takes a few seconds for everything I eat.  So take a look if you care to.  You’ll see I thought about starting at the beginning of the month, and only kept at it a week or two later.

AJ’s Food Calendar

A New Sound

meisajDaily Life

oh my me album coverOn several occasions in my life I have randomly held onto a cd that I really had no interest in listening to.  I think the best case for this was from my youth, when randomly the BMG CD Club sent me Pablo Honey by Radiohead.  When someone visiting the house said they were I put it in the cd player and never looked back.

So yesterday driving home I was tired and looking for something to keep me awake.  I grabbed the cd’s in the door of my car and came upon Oh My Me.  I had picked up the cd with Wussy and Sundresses from a Kickstarter campaign last year.  I love Wussy (they are amazing, check them out) and the Sundresses impressed the hell out of me as well.  But Oh My Me, I had no clue who they were, and their cd was in a plastic sleeve looking a little underwhelming.

But wanting something new to keep me up I threw the cd in the car.  The first song was blew me away.  Sounding both old jazz/bluesy and yet something altogether different at the same time.  I was awake and involved in the music for the next 20 minutes til I arrived at home.  A quick search and purchase later and I had a live album to along with the cd I already had.

Life is good.  I’ve got new music to listen to.  And that’s always a good thing.

 

Relaxed Biking

meisajDaily Life

I haven’t biked with a group of people in a long time.

I generally biked for distance or for speed.  Basically as hard and as fast as I can.  Which probably isn’t good for my legs in the long run.  So I joined Meetup.com and went for a ride with people yesterday.

They met up 9 miles from my apartment and biked slowly for 14 miles or so.  Basically you bike out for 40 minutes and back.  So I biked the whole way talking to a few people.  I had a long talk with a 10 year old on the ride about Garfield.  Garfield is his favorite cartoon character.  I then went out for dinner with them at a bar/pub around the corner from where me met.

So yeah, a nice slow ride.  Felt almost like slacking.  I think this summer I’d bike to wherever we meet, go for the 14 or so mile bike ride, and bike back to the apartment to throw a little more distance in.  But yeah, leisurely bike riding, I’m down for that once in a while.  It felt good.

Strangely enough, as much as I love my cyclocross bike, I’ve been eyeing road bikes too.

That’s a ways off though.

By the way, since buying my new bike the first week of April, I’ve bike over 450 miles.  Not too bad.

Best Thinking

meisajDaily Life

11082010AJC

I do my best thinking on my bike.

When I’m out on long rides I listen to music or audiobooks or the news, but these don’t distract my mind from wandering.  I’ve come up with stories, book ideas, things to draw, blog entries, and other random deep thoughts.  I’ll have the greatest ideas every, things I get excited about to implement or do when I get home.

The problem is that I forget everything I’ve thought of as soon as I finish my ride.  Its like I get all this blood pumping to my head while biking and clears away the background noise constantly buzzing in my head.  Nothing going on except biking and the thoughts in my brain.  No distractions.

Someday, I’ll be able to harness this for the good of all mankind I’m sure.

Waking Up

meisajDaily Life

06302010AJC

The right music to wake up to is important.

Nothing crazy is my motto.  Smooth into melody.

I think I’ve hit the nail on the head with this one.  Maybe a little too good.  I’ve got the perfect morning song that ends up stuck in my head for at least an hour each morning after I wake up.  And as Sam can attest, if more than one second of the alarm plays before my lightening quick morning reflexes shut off the alarm, it has been a bad morning.

I once almost punched a girlfriend when she accidentally played the same song I used for an alarm late at night while I was sleeping.  She was awake in bed and was trying to put a show or movie on the laptop (I can sleep through that and just about anything else) and played the song instead.  I sat up immediately and snatched my arm out to shut off the alarm and almost gave her a black eye.

Anyways.  Stories aside, this one song has been what I wake up to on workdays for the last year or so.