Sun., 11/27/05

Week 4 Check-In: I did morning pages 6 days out of 7 this week - missed Monday when I was trying to get organized to go out of town over the holiday. I enjoy doing the pages -- gives me a chance to internalize about my day - or week - and the plans I have for it. My "life pie" has changed a bit from the first time I did the exercise -- mostly in that I added more physical activity into my life - walked both days last weekend and 4 days this week with Hilda, Dale, Jackie and Lindsey. I want to try to get myself motivated to go back to Curves again as well - I'm still paying them, I ought to be getting something for my money!

The extended artist date was a challenge - if I had been at home on my own and doing it alone, I think I would have had a hard time spending an entire day - unless I was doing a sewing project of some sort. Hilda and I rinsed our dyed fabric in the morning, then she had some errands to run so she drove me around town and showed me a number of murals that a couple had painted on some of the buildings in Tucumcari - my photo above is a segment of one of them. They're very detailed works that need to be viewed up close to catch all the details -- rattlesnakes hiding under rocks, small birds and animals that often almost blend into the backgrounds, etc. I took several photos of them with the new camera, as well as some of Hilda's cat Frances. Definitely need to get a bigger memory card as the one that came with the camera only allows me to take about 10 pictures before I have to download and delete the pictures. Since I'm in the learning curve right now, I didn't delete much -- just shot and downloaded everything I took -- I'm sure in the future I'll become more selective about what I keep. In the afternoon we took a walk and saw quite a few birds - cranes, hawks, a kingfisher - nice to get out and breathe some fresh air and experience a bit of nature. The final segment of the day-long artist date was, in fact, a movie -- we picked up Amelie at the video store and watched it -- it was a beautiful movie. The color and quality of light are often so different in foreign films, I really enjoyed the experience.

I didn't do too badly with the reading deprivation exercise - probably mostly because I wasn't at home and didn't take a book or books along with me to read. I fell off the wagon at bedtime last night though and picked up a book to read myself to sleep -- just had an overwhelming need/desire to have a book in my hands and wasn't able to put it off the one more day it would have taken me until Week 5 began. A week is a long time for me to go without reading - so I'm amazed I managed it as long as I did. It's not like there were no books I could have picked up at Hilda's - I just managed to keep myself from doing so for that long at least.

No synchronicity comes to mind. Deb - I've read your emails, but not sure where it is that I'm supposed to paste the link -- I'll see if I can figure it out after I post this.