Sunday, December 2

Please put a penny in the old man's hat

Christmas is coming, and the goose is getting fat, but I'm not. I'm back on track, keeping to my regimen, getting my exercise and my sleep.

1750 calories a day and 4 or 5 trips to the gym each week. Last night around 9 I had to have an apple and a big (2 cups) bowl of Trader Joe's generic cheerios to get to 1700, but it all worked out.

I didn't do much at the gym, since I felt I was still keeping some sort of minor bug at arm's length, but sometimes the important thing is just to get to the gym, work up a little sweat. I took my friend Stewart's advice and did some weights, because, as he tells me, muscle burns calories. I've got a lot of muscle. My legs have always been like tree trunks, even when I was a 160-pound 17 year old.

A friend invited me for lunch on Wednesday. I didn't realize it was an invitation, so I suggested we meet at Jose's, which is what I always do with friends, because the chicken fajita salad is cheap ($5.95), yummy, and only about 600 calories. As long as I have an iced tea rather than a Corona.

My friend countered that it was an invitation for lunch, meaning, like at her house, and suggested that I suggest something that I would like for lunch. I was stumped.

Eventually I expressed my stumpedness, which made it appear that I was stressed out by the question. Maybe I was. I don't know for sure. I feel a bit dense on the subject. One silly thing about being on my BMGS regimen is that I occasionally get stressed out trying to determine how many calories are in a meal. This is no doubt a case of one kind of compulsion being at loggerheads with another kind of compulsion.

But most of the time I manage to take it easy. Even if part of ability to do that is tied to my tendency to be pretty repetitive about what I eat. If I have the same thing for lunch 4 or 5 days a week it does tend to help keep track of the calories.

I'll be sure to report on what my friend makes for lunch on Wednesday. And at some point I will ask her some pointed questions about the ingredients and their calories counts.

Meanwhile, I have an exciting new project going. The book about the Amazon Kindle has merged with another project and become a book about using the Amazon Kindle as an independent publishing platform. Indie publishing is a topic that I am passionate about, and it is good to be writing about something that I am passionate about (other than music, women, the Red Sox and the Celtics).

So yesterday I wrote a 3500-word* chapter, which also works as a stand-alone article, and published it in both a Kindle edition and a hard copy edition. In my usual balls to the wall approach, I am trying to bring the book out before the end of December. We'll see about that.

Also yesterday, Amazon sold the first electronic copy of the first article/chapter from this project, which I had published on Thursday. So, there is one person out there who has spent $399 for a Kindle and then paid Amazon another $1.99 so that she can read a little article that I wrote when she is on a train, in a plane, or eating bread at Au Bon Pain.

We've come full circle, and I am pleased. Amazon will be sending me 70 cents at the end of February, as my royalty from that transaction. But my view of the Kindle is that it starts with a trickle. Like Priuses and Blackberries and Christmas music, soon those Kindles will be everywhere.

*(Thanks, Ned and Raven).


Sunday's Soundtrack

A Long December - Adam Duritz and Counting Crows

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that its all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

Saturday's Soundtrack

This was my number one "sing Danny to sleep" song a few years ago, and remains near the top of my repertoire in the shower or when I am driving. I'm very, very good in the shower.


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