Maybe Las Vegas

Some time ago, I wrote about our major dilemma about where to go for the year end celebrations. There should be a way to bid adieu to 2009 and welcome 2010. The next year, everyone is saying, will bring in major changes, and these changes would be good ones. So, there is a need to doubly make the new year feel welcome amidst us.

Always I feel weird when an old year comes to an end. Especially the last few hours, when I feel sad that one stretch of my life has come to an end, but I am also waiting for the new year to begin. I'm sure everyone feels similar emotions, when waiting becomes a torture. We just want old things to end, although we feel sad, but we want new things to begin.

These cycles of years, seasons, days, months, weeks have a beginning and an end. Everything earthly has a start and a finish, I would say, and all of you would agree on that, I feel. This is what marks our life. This is what differentiates us from inanimate things. Life – that is what it is all about.

And at the end of one year, when a new year is on the horizon, wanting to celebrate it in a big way is not a bad idea at all. These are not things that do not come again and again. The moments come, and then go away. They go for ever.

It is about catching hold of the moment, even if for a moment only. Then then go back to it later in the mind, repeatedly. Moments live only in our memories. But for it to be in the memory, it has to be lived and experienced at least once. Life is all about living the moments, then reliving them in our minds again and again. As long as we have memory, we are alive. That is why diseases like Alzheimer's is so dreaded. If we don't have memory, it is like death.

To have an enriched memory, to have great moments, we've thought of making a trip to Las Vegas. We'd welcome the new year, 2010, in Las Vegas, in all probability (that is, if we get hotel reservation). That would be a different place from our residence, and a different memory. Hope we're making the right decision.

Yes, it is about Food!

The last few weeks had been an intense probing into my diet, routine, exercise, my sleep pattern, bicycling, yoga. But first and foremost, about cutting down calories. I've been gaining weight, and the first thing I wanted to do was to get back to normal range, which would be 105 pounds.

That my current weight in 130 lb and BMI 24 has done little to elevate my mood about my situation. No one needs to point me out that I needed to do it in earnest. That it should be a war effort, that I really needed to motivate myself to eat less, and that if I wanted to avoid a pre-diabetic state, I must buck up to work hard.

And so here I am, maintaining a food diary diligently. For every piece of cake, breakfast cereal, every morsel of rice, every glass of juice, I have entered the calorie values against them on a page of my notebook.

I can hardly see any difference in me since I started this activity, and I am about to lose enthusiasm. Eating less has not lowered my weight fast and drastically, I way I want. It has been extremely slow. It has taken me weeks to lower 3 lbs. Is that good enough? When would I get to 105 lb? That goal seems very far away.