Pre-Thanksgiving Business...

Yesterday evening, I was invited to be a guest speaker at a library school course here on campus. Much sweating ensued. But it went well. Very well, I think. It's so nice to speak with graduate students, as they seem much more interested in what I have to tell them than undergraduates. Nobody fell asleep - that's always a good sign. They all seemed to be following along and engaged. Good stuff.

Today is pay day, so I seized the opportunity to stalk a few places online wherein I have my eye on some gifts for Hank. The big thing that I want to get him from Santa is the Fisher Price Imaginext Space Shuttle. Target has exclusive rights to sell it, and for the life of me I couldn't find a single shuttle at any Target that I obsessively traveled to. Online, they were listed as being out of stock. Well. Imagine my excitement when I stalked this morning and found them back in stock and ready to ship. I snagged one immediately. Very excited :)

In not so great news, I stepped on the scale a few days ago and realized that I've once again gotten back to that high end of the spectrum of what my weight has been since I gave birth to Henry. I really can't use that as a guidepost anymore seeing as Hank is 4 years old, but hey, what the heck. It's a 10 pound range, and for the most part I've managed to stay right in the middle. Well, I'm now at the *top* and the Catholic Librarian is decidedly unhappy about this. So, 3 days ago I cut out snacking and have already lost 3 pounds. Life is so unfair. It's not like I snacked all that much or eat badly at all. We're pretty conscientious in my house of eating healthy food and staying in shape. I've never been a gym-goer, but I walk and run when I can, which is regularly, and we buy whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables, etc. I should be able to eat a cookie at 3 pm every day and not have any repurcussions, but alas.

The snacking thing is particularly nefarious. Right around 10 am and 3 pm each day at work, I get hungry. And it's sssssooooo easy to justify to yourself why your chosen snack is really not that bad for you:

"Fritos. They have corn in them, right? That's a *grain*; how can that possibly be bad? I'll just have this one tiny bag..."

250 calories later, you're still hungry, and so then I tend to eat more at dinner, and maybe even dessert. Doing this for mutiple weeks is how 5 lbs "magically" appears on the scale.

So anyway, it's not that bad, but I can't help how I am. I'm happy with the way I look, but I don't want to get complacent. Those 5 lbs are toast.

Given that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, this will pose a bit of a challenge, but I'm up for it. I plan to eat less so that I can drink more wine. I'll need it, with the extended family drama that will inevitably accompany each holiday...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I won't be posting for the rest of the week; I'll report in Monday on the First Sunday of Advent :)