Time To Get Away!

Take a tour; jump on a cruise; get away from it all!

What are we getting away from? Hmmmm…LAND?

If you go on a bus tour, you’ll be traveling with 40-60 strangers. You choose the places you want to visit, and the tour company will match your interests. You could spend a couple of days in 3 or 4 spots, or you could go on those “If it’s Tuesday, we must be in Belgium…” tours where you get a 1/2 hour to shop in one place, 20-minute lunch, drive to another place, take a 1-hour walking tour, drive to another place, sleep for 6 1/2 hours, then do it again tomorrow. On the last day of the tour, you spend 20 hours on the bus to get back to the airport.

If you go on a cruise, you’ll be traveling with a small city…5000 of your closest friends. They’re your closest because you stand in line for everything! There are lines for food, lines for the swimming pool and water park, lines to get into the shows, lines to get off the boat for the tours, lines to get on the boats after the tours, and lines just because someone up the way stopped to talk with one of their closest friends that they met yesterday in line for lunch and nobody can get by them.

If you want to get away, you 1st need to know what you’re getting away from. Close your eyes and picture what your perfect day would look like? Who would be with you? What would the weather be like? What kind of activities would you do? Would this include food and drink? How long would you want to stay away?

When Mark and I went on our cruise, it was a small Princess Line ship. There may have been 1000 people on board, but not much more than that. We knew the crewmen and the line servers. We got this cruise from our kids for our 30th anniversary, and they must have read our minds. We went to Alaska, and the boat was small enough to go to places the big ships couldn’t. We had some great tours and informational sessions, and even on a wildly rocking boat, the shows were amazing!

When Mark and I went on our bus tour, we were with our best friends and their son and new daughter-in-law. There were challenges: one of our party lost a wallet, and I got lost in Edinburgh, but on the other hand, we had so many memories and the camaraderie was first-rate.

I cannot imagine “getting away from it all” by being on a crowded boat that you never have to leave…A floating shopping mall with cubicles you can sleep in.

When Mark and I went on our road trip to New Mexico and Arizona, it was just us and some touring with my cousin, Sara.

Wonderful trip! We have to do this again.

This, IMHO, is getting away!

This isn’t.

If/Then

If you eat a certain way, then your blood sugar reflects it.

If you exercise, your muscles respond.

If you keep track of your calories in and calories expended, you know why you’re gaining or losing weight.

If…then.

Why doesn’t it work then?

I eat Keto, and my blood sugar is all over the map.

I exercise, and my muscles get sore, but not stronger.

I keep track of my calories and in order to lose weight, I’d have to eat 1 egg, 1 piece of bacon, and 1/2 tomato, and be done for the day. I only have 200 cal of activity per day.

My watch says my stress level is up. How? I’m just sitting and reading!

Biology, then, is not predictable with any degree of accuracy. What a shock!

Unintentional consequences

See Gizmos.

I got the Garmin watch. It’s a touch screen. It has more features and benefits than any watch should have. Well, there are always unintentional consequences. It’s connected to my phone. So when I’m getting Facebook notifications, texts, and phone calls (especially spam), and mail notifications, I check my watch because it buzzes.

To do this, I lift my wrist and look at the watch…

So my Garmin thinks I am walking and I get step credit! I’ll take it!

The secret Ingredient!

I love chili season! The warm red sauce, the beans and meat, the spice…

Little known fact: Mexican chocolate adds a bit of cinnamon. The cinnamon oil, not just the stick. It’s quite spicy. If you add some to your chili, it gives it some heat but not the same as pepper heat. Then to bring out the flavor of the meat and the tomato sauce, you can add a bit of cloves and ginger. If you want it exotic, add just a touch of allspice and maybe nutmeg.

OH NO! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!!

I put pumpkin spice in my chili! And I liked it! Abomination I tell you!

Gizmos

I got me one of them fancy watches that tells your heartbeat, your blood pressure, your bank balance, and your grocery list. I’m a little intimidated. I think It’s smarter than I am. It should be coming sometime next week. The watch is normal size, but I think the owner’s manual might be bigger than the one for my car… More to follow.

The reason for this marvelous invention? I keep track of my intake of calories, but the expenditure is only a guess. My fitness apps don’t assign caloric values for strength training. I cannot explain why my blood glucose is so wild based on my eating habits. I dropped 25 pounds and seem stuck now, but I have started doing weight training. You know how it feels the day after you do some new workout? Not so bad? So you go the next day. Then the second day after you’ve started your workouts, it hits you. BAM. It’s not just the stuff you did on the 1st day, but compounded on the 2nd and so the 3rd day you need a forklift to get you out of bed.

Ow.

Doing bent-over-the-bench lat rows, I can do 20 reps at 25#. Not sure what my max weight is. Then doing bench presses with dumbbells and those scare the crap out of me. I did 20# in each hand for 10 reps. That’s 40#. I was afraid to try the 25# weights. I think I’d need a spotter.

Wt: 202

So this morning, my Garmin is going off like crazy, every 30 seconds! I thought it was supposed to let me sleep, but I set my “get up” time for 7:30 so at 7:45 it says “Good Morning!” But it doesn’t stop. It’s off sleep mode now so it’s connected to my phone. Now I’m still not ready to get up, but I have to find out what is dinging the crap out of my wrist. It’s connected to my weather app, and although it’s been raining, lightning, and thundering since 3:00 AM, it’s so important that my GARMIN tells me that it’s RAINING. Then 5 min later, it’s STILL RAINING. Then 5 min later It’s going to continue to rain for the next 10 minutes. Then 10 min later, “See, I told you so!” Then 5 min later, it may rain in the next 15 min; then in the next 10; then in the next 5; and then Ohhh Kay maybe 6 more minutes. I’m learning how to turn off alerts.

It continues…

I went back to the gym today. It’s the first time since Covid in March of 2020. I may be sorry.

I had to establish a baseline for my initial exercises. I was supposed to do a gradual increase to see which weights I could lift easily until I got to one where it was really taxing.

I’m doing lat rows from bent over position on a bench and got to 5# each arm, then, since that was easy I thought I’d go to 15#. Someone had stolen all the 15# weights in the whole gym! Got to 20# though for 20 repetitions. 1st time in the gym for 3 years (since March of 2020).

Then I’m doing max weights today for bench press, and I got to 65# for 5 reps.

Then I did chair squats. Stand up, then take 10 seconds to sit.

Wt 202. (includes shoes and workout clothes, so no I didn’t strip.) Oh and I weighed at home because Someone stole the scales. Unbelievable!

I now weigh 6 pounds less than what I weighed when I started the blog eight years ago. https://ihavebetterthingstodo.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/it-begins/

RISE IRSE ISRE…

One of the exercises we did at our Elite Influencer’s Summit in England was one involving values. It was very intense. We’d tell our stories and describe our avatars and the traits and characteristics we admired and those we hated. From those conversations, our values were made known. Because we were on a tight schedule, we only listed 10 values…the 10 most important things in our lives. If you look around, you will see companies, organizations, school systems, and governmental entities claiming these qualities: Respect, Integrity, Sevice, and Excellence. However, the qualities and values we revealed were through our actions, our speech, and our relationships. The ones claimed by the companies were chosen because they resonate with the clients, customers, constituents, and children’s caretakers. They were not derived from their actions.

If you were to interview the top echelons of these entities, you would discover they have 20-30 of the values that are really important to them, and though Respect, Integrity, Service, and Excellence might be on the list, they’re not very high on it.

Here’s how the exercise went. After discovering the values expressed by the person’s way of life, their thoughts, and their actions, they were put into a list. Then their coach had the participant choose between them to arrive at a prioritized list.

Integrity or Independence? Integrity
Integrity or Truth? Integrity
Integrity or Freedom? Freedom
Freedom or Honesty? Freedom
Freedom or alignment? Freedom…and so on and so on until all of the values are in order of priority.

Our guinea pig had to choose among 30 of these values and it took 1 1/2 hours to get to the definitive list. It was a grueling exercise! You could tell he was exhausted! Have you or anyone you know ever done an exercise like this? I’d be willing to bet that none of these executives have.

One of my values was impact. I was unique in that aspect. Another participant had Dependability for his #1. Another had Contribution. Given the choice of Honesty, Truth, or Integrity, most chose Honesty 1st. Given a choice of Respect, Alignment, or Loyalty, most chose Loyalty. It’s not that those traits aren’t important, it’s that they’re less important than others.

Looking through the Toastmaster posts on the Facebook page, I would infer that Service and Integrity are something desired more by the membership than by the Leadership of the organization. They are high on the complaint list! What kind of values do the Leaders seem to stress? Alignment, Loyalty, and adherence to cultural norms within the organization. Respect seems to be an accessory and Excellence is a bonus. How do you measure excellence? With a contest, right? It’s why they have the Olympic games and Spelling Bees. It’s why there are Michelin Stars and JD Powers awards. Yet, if TM could get rid of contests, they would in a flash. TM is a non-profit business that sells the promise of competence as communicators and leaders while providing materials for study. Do they produce good communicators and leaders? How would anyone know? Yet, their core values are Integrity (doing what they say they’ll do), Respect (showing appreciation and consideration, and treating people with honor and dignity), Service (providing support and aid to further the members’ goals), and Excellence (celebrating the best of performance, quality, and merit).

Look at all the other organizations that present themselves with those same values. Are these traits apparent in their behavior, their advertising, or their relationships with their clients or students?

When have you ever done a deep dive into your core values? If people could look at what you write about, how you express yourself, how you behave, what makes you happy and what makes you mad, the people you surround yourself with and those you shun, what conclusions would they draw about your values? I tell you, I was surprised when I did this exercise.

Mine were these:

1. Impact
2. Autonomy
3. Intelligence
4. Quality
5. Curiosity
6. Creativity
7. Integrity
8. Beauty
9. Open-mindedness
10. Equity
11. Choice
12. Persistence
13. Humor

Some of these values may not even seem like values to many people. This, of course, is not an exhaustive list, and more values may bubble up to higher priorities as I continue to live on this beautiful blue ball.

If you claim values, you better live them. If you choose values because they help you sell cars, Integrity, honesty, or truth isn’t even on your list. Remember, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.” Ralph Waldo Emerson