Today was a busier than usual day. First I nearly got my Elven Druid killed when she insisted on yelling at the top of her lungs in a cavern where a bunch of people had died. We didn’t die, and she is no longer cursed, so I call today’s adventure 100% positive. Then I went home and let the dogs run around for a while. Padfoot has discovered that being fenced in is not his style, so he spends most of his days attempting to find ways around the many fences we have been erecting, repairing, adjusting, raising, and so on.

I’ve always felt that life is never dull, but sometimes I help it along a little too much. What’s funny to me is that over-scheduling seems almost natural, but these days my idea of over-scheduling is much less rigorous than it used to be. I used to schedule myself with 60+ hours of stuff to do in a week. “Sleep is for the weak” was my motto. These days, I like to sleep.

Sugar sucks. I gave up eating anything sweet three weeks ago, or was it two weeks ago? I guess two, but it seems like forever. I keep hoping that there will be a point where I won’t feel these intense cravings for sugar or something sweet. In fact, I can say with some honesty that the cravings are not as bad today as they were on July 1st. But saying that is like saying that my bathtub isn’t as wet as the ocean because there isn’t as much water there.

So my newest life plan is to try out quitting sugar (and basically anything sweet) for the next few weeks. I started on Sunday, July 1st, which must have been a week ago now, right? I have discovered a few things in the short period I’ve been off sugar: I am, sadly, addicted to caffeine. Mark was telling me that and I was sure he was wrong, but man, today without Diet Coke, my head was aching and my temper was short.

I was reading Leo Babuata’s site Zen Habits for a while now, and one of the things he recommends is the idea of living without goals. This is something I struggle with. I struggle with the idea that I should declutter my life of goals. I could argue that goals are how I’ve achieved what I have in my life. But when I think more closely, the reality is that the goals were a side note.

I grew up knowing I had my heart on my sleeve. Every emotion I feel seems to start on my face, move to my mouth and then register in my brain. So when I find myself thinking “they should just calm down” about someone (other than myself, of course) the irony isn’t lost on me. For the fourth year in a row, I am participating in the About.com Readers’ Choice Awards.

The hard part of changing my lifestyle is that while it’s going great, it’s easy to keep doing and not get frustrated. But when it’s not, it’s not. I’ve now had two weeks in a row of either no weight loss or weight gain, and my measurements have gone back up. And this is after I started going to CrossFit twice a week to try to get more fit. I know, I know, if I’m weight training I’m going to grow muscle and that weighs more than fat.

I have decided to read or re-read all the books on the list of finalists for best Science Fiction and Fantasy from NPR. I just finished Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre. This is one of the first science fiction books I remember reading and re-reading. I know I read others before this one, but this one really stood out in my head as something really interesting. Mark was laughing because my copy (most likely from 1978 when it was published) was tattered and worn.

I think of myself as a rational but open-minded person, but one of the more “woo woo” theories that I strongly believe in is the power of intention. I believe that if you set your intentions clearly and deliberately, you will manifest those results in your life. Whether or not you believe in this as a type of mysticism or just a practical application of goals setting, I have done it in my life many times with great success.

that I wanted to buy seeds online again like I did last year. The problem is that I had recycled the last seed catalog I’d received. So I was just going to go online to choose my seeds. Then Mark came in with the mail and what was in it? Besides a packet of LTCs (some very cool ones, by the way) was a seed catalog. Yay! Apparently I need to buy seeds.

I’ve decided to compile a list of all the things that I’d like to change in my life (or do or improve, etc.). This is kinda like a master goals list. The point is that I can’t achieve my goals if I don’t know what they are. So here goes in no particular order: Eat less junk food - ultimately I want to get it down to 1 day a week or even just a few hours on that one day Bake my own bread Eat NO feedlot or factory meat.