The Weekly Review

 Well, back again for another quick recap for my week.

As it regards working on being healthier, I did manage to get on the treadmill 3 times this week (up from 2 the previous week). It is a small step of progress, but progress nonetheless. Each day I walked for 45 minutes with the slight incline, doing a little over 2 miles and 250 vertical feet. That continues to feel like the right intensity right now - enough for me to feel like it involves some work, but not so much that it feels too much. For this coming week, I'm hoping for 4 times on the treadmill.

Also, I know much of the journey to become healthier needs to involve eating healthier. For lack of a better accountability option right now, I have started using the My Fitness Pal app again to track my eating, with a goal of calories allotted for each meal and day. That's 21 meals in a week, with the hope to reduce snacking (simply so I don't have to track it). When I lost weight several years ago, this was the method I used; I always figured that if I could hit the right number calories or less for 5 or 6 days each week, and around 80% (16-17) of the meals each week, along with some exercise, I would lose weight and be healthier. So, for the next week, I'm going to try and track those meals/calories again, and post here for some accountability. We'll see how it goes.

----------

I didn't get as much reading done this week, for a variety of reasons.

I had a procedure this week to remove some cysts from the area on my right eyelid or immediately next to it. Nothing to it really, though it did make the right side of my face feel a bit different for a day or to. I go back this week to get the stitches removed.

I kept losing myself in Facebook, tumbling like Alice down rabbit holes for no good reason. Back in 2014 or 2015, I deleted my Facebook account, leaving it behind because I did not like the lack of control I had over the News Feed, among other issues. I rejoined about 2 years ago when Maia started kindergarten, simply because the local school district used the platform to distribute information from time to time. Alas, my opinion of Facebook has not improved, and my ability to avoid my obsessive tendencies with it have also not improved. Thus, I made the decision today to again delete the account. Truly, I believe I was happier and wasted a whole lot less time when I never worried about the platform. I'll have to work a bit harder to keep abreast of certain updates from schools and other groups, but I imagine it will be worth it for my mental health.

I don't have much in articles to share this week, but I will share this post from a local journalist concerning the death of his father from COVID-19 - "'I'm not sure I'm going to make it .' Columnist recounts father's death from COVID-19". I know of the journalist, having previously been in a local service club with him for a short time. The piece hit home, particularly the idea of believing that he would have help from others in protecting his father. As some may know, my father-in-law died from COVID-19 in early April (there was an article about my in-laws in their local paper). The inability to engage in communal grieving has made an obviously incredibly difficult experience so much worse. In any event, the local piece was a reminder, again, of my family's loss, and the fact that so many families (almost 200,000 now in the country) are also experiencing loss during such difficult times.

----------

On the book front, I did finish one of the better books I've read in awhile - Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. It was a fantastic book, one which I would highly recommend. Otherwise, I started The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill, a middle grade fantasy book, and Zephyr Teachout's Break Em' Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money, a book examining the monopolies and the concentration of economic and political power over the last few decades.

Life rolls along.