I haven’t participated in Kenlie’s weekly Friend Makin’ Mondays in a while, so I thought I’d jump back in today since it seems really fun.

Per Kenlie’s instructions:  If you’ve taken part in FMM then you know the rules. If you’re new, please take a moment to answer this week’s question on your own blog then add your link in the comments section here so we can all see your FMM questions and answers. Please invite your blog readers to add their links too so everyone has to opportunity to be seen. The idea is to connect with other awesome bloggers so take a moment to post your own FMM post and comment on a couple of other posts. Now it’s time for this week’s topic!

FMM: Short Answers

1. Mac or PC? I have both, but definitely prefer Mac.  I’ve been a Mac user since the late 80′s.
2. Do you paint your own nails? Sometimes.  I like going and getting pampered occasionally, too.
3. Beach or mountains?  Living in southern California, I’m fortunate enough to have both in fairly close proximity.  If I had to choose just one, I’d probably go with the beach.
4. What’s the title of the book you’re currently reading?  Lover Mine (book nine from the Black Dagger Brotherhood series) by J.R. Ward
5. Do you dance?  Not very often, but I enjoy it when I do.
6. CNN or Fox News?  Neither.  I usually watch MSNBC.  I <3 Rachel Maddow and would happily run away with her if it weren’t for that pesky detail of her partner, Susan.
7. Do you ride a bicycle?  No, but I own two of them.  Don’t ask.
8. Do you get a yearly flu shot?  No.
9. Best movie you’ve seen in 2012?  I haven’t been to the movie theater yet this year.  I watched The Help on DVD a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it.
10. Do you prefer to workout at home or at the gym?  It depends on what I’m doing for my workout.  If I’m going to walk or want to do an aerobics-type workout, then I usually just do it at home since I have a pretty large DVD selection.  I usually hit the gym if I want to spin, swim, Zumba, etc.
11. Last airport you were in?  Well, the last was technically LAX on a return flight from Dulles following a business trip to the D.C./NoVA area in December.
12. Married or single?  Single
13. iPhone or Android? iPhone
14. Do you prefer to be in pictures or taking pictures?  Definitely taking pictures.  I’m not really a fan of having my photo taken.
15. Favorite brand of sneakers?  It’s a toss-up between New Balance and Asics.  I really like Brooks, too.
16. Do you like snow?  For visiting, yes.  For putting up with an entire winter, no, which is precisely why I live in southern California.
17. Do you have/want to have kids?  I wanted kids, but couldn’t have them.
18. Summer or Winter? I actually prefer Spring and Fall over either Summer or Winter.
19. Do you know how to swim?  Yes
20. Do you prefer to shop in store or online?  With the exceptions of food & clothing, I do most of my shopping online.  I’m not really a fan of malls and it just works better with my busy schedule to shop online.

Until next time …

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I will be participating in the internet strike on Wednesday, January 18 in protest  about the SOPA/PIPA legislation currently being considered by both the US House of Representatives and US Senate.  So, on Wednesday, my regular blog will be replaced with information for contacting your members of Congress to ask they NOT support SOPA/PIPA since these bills are nothing more than legislated censorship.

While I certainly understand the need to protect intellectual property and the need of protection for copyright holders (although that’s technically already been covered since 1998 in the US by DMCA),  SOPA/PIPA are just not the best way to handle that task.  Both pieces of legislation are poorly written and too far-reaching.  Please contact your Congress Critters to let them know your thoughts before they vote on this legislation on January 24th!

See you on Thursday …

P.S. – You can’t even begin to imagine how difficult this post was to write without citing Wikipedia!  If you think this legislation doesn’t apply to you, just think about how often you use that or similar resources.  What would you do if they were suddenly gone?!  They, along with several other major sites, will also be going dark on Wednesday in protest of SOPA/PIPA.  So, I guess we’ll all have to step back in time to a world before Wikipedia, Reddit, Craigslist, LOLCats, and more for at least one day.  Personally, that’s not a world in which I want to live!

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*Whew*  I’ve finally got time to sit down and write part 2 of my New Year – New Start post.

This is the post where I finally get around to talking about goals.  No, I won’t be setting any grandiose goals or resolutions for the entire year.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve definitely come to realize that setting long-term goals isn’t a good thing for me.  If I find myself getting off track, I let it derail me completely.  These days I prefer to stick with more short-term goals because that just seems to work much better for me.

I have decided that I’m just going to take things eight weeks at a time.  I think a couple of months is a long enough time frame to let me set some decent goals without making them too far down the road.  It will also make it easier for me to track in week segments vs. two month segments because then I can tie my goals in with my weekly Weight Watchers meeting rather than whatever arbitrary day of the week the first of the new month would be starting.

Fortunately, my first eight week block times almost perfectly with our new challenge over at the Sisterhood.   There are categories for those shrinking as well as for those who are goal and not interested in weight loss.  I’m not sure if my eight week goal stints work in alignment with the Sisterhood challenges the whole year, but it’s working for now and I’m going with it.

Ok, so now that I’ve outlined how I’m planning to do things, let’s get down to some brass tacks!  Here are my goals for January 1 through February 26:

• Track all of my food in eTools – I’ve gotten pretty sloppy lately about tracking my food.  I know have much better success when I’m faithfully tracking.  I need to get back to this habit!
• Do some sort of intentional exercise four times per week – Exercise is a bit dicey for me right now with my knee injury.  There are some things I literally just can’t do right now.  That doesn’t mean I need to get lazy and not do anything!  There are plenty of ways I can get in some exercise that won’t bother my knee, so I need to just do it!
• Drink at least 64 oz of real water per day – Another area where I’ve gotten pretty lax is in drinking my water.  I think part of that comes from Weight Watchers changing their healthy guideline from “water” to “liquids” a while back.  I seem to rely far too much on flavoring my water with Mio, Crystal Light, etc.  I need to get back to some good old fashioned water.
• Try at least one new recipe every two weeks – I have a plethora of cookbooks (not to mention lots of recipes to try pinned on Pinterest)  in my personal library.  There’s no reason why I need to stick with eating the same things over and over all of the time.  I need to expand my repertoire by adding in some new recipes this year.

So, there you have it.  I think I’ll definitely have success if I stick with these goals over the next eight weeks.  What’s that?  Why yes, you ARE correct, there isn’t a weight loss number goal in there.  I’m not setting any of those this year.  My goal with my weight loss will be to try and fall within the recommendation of Weight Watchers and my personal physician of averaging between ½ to 2 pounds per week over time.  So, if all goes well, by this time next year I should be somewhere between 26 and 104 pounds lighter and I’m good with that.

I also mentioned in my previous post about a group venture I’m taking part in with several other members of the Sisterhood.  We’ve undertaken a group book project for the year following the principles outlined in this book:

Each week we’ll be focusing on implementing one of the changes in the book into our daily routine.  This week’s chapter is all about water which fits perfectly with one of my goals for the next eight weeks!  We’ve even got a group going over at The ‘Hood so we can encourage each other during the process.  The author even recognized our group on her website.  How cool is that?!  If you’re interested in joining us, and I hope you are, please head over to The ‘Hood and sign up.  You can also grab a copy of the book on Amazon.  If you have a Kindle, it’s available in Kindle format, too.  We’re all really excited to be doing this together during 2012.

Today’s assignment for the 30 Day Blog Challenge is to share your favorite store.  This one is a complete no brainer for me:  AMAZON!   I order from them so much that I think the property manager at my complex probably thinks I own stock in them.   If we’re talking a traditional brick and mortar store, then it would probably be Target.  I love me some Target!

In closing, I just wanted to take a moment to point out that you may have noticed the Google Friend Connect follow box has disappeared from my sidebar.  In an effort to consolidate some of their services, Google has made the decision to discontinue allowing GFC to be used on non-Blogger sites effective March 1, 2012.  Since it’s going away in a couple of months anyway, I just went on and removed it now.  If you would like to follow my blog, you can find several other options in my sidebar.  You can subscribe by email, RSS feed, or via NetworkedBlogs.  I hope you’ll choose at least once method so you can always know when I have new posts. Thanks!

Until next time …

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As bloggers are wont to do, this is my obligatory year in review post.  Rather than writing out everything about my year in paragraph form, here it is in meme form.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?  I went to a blogging conference (FitBloggin‘ .
2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?  I don’t make New Years’ resolutions anymore.  I realized long ago that I always failed miserably at keeping them.  These days, I prefer to set smaller goals throughout the year.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?  My friend and fellow Sisterhood writer, Heather.
4. Did anyone close to you die?  My uncle.
5. What countries did you visit?  None.
6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?  A significant other would be nice.
7. What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory?  September 11.  It’s difficult to believe it’s been 10 years already.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?  Earning five (5) professional certifications.
9. What was your biggest failure?  My weight loss efforts (or lack thereof).
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?  I’m currently battling a bum left knee.
11. What was the best thing you bought?  My new refrigerator!
12. Where did most of your money go?  As always, given I live in southern California, RENT!
13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?  Finally getting to meet long-time blogging friends at FitBloggin‘!
14. What song/album will always remind you of 2011?  Toss up between Party Rock Anthem and Moves Like Jagger.
15. What do you wish you’d done more of?  Staying on track with my weight loss efforts.
16. What do you wish you’d done less of?  Getting derailed from my weight loss efforts.
17. How will you be spending/did you spend Christmas?  Home alone with my kitty.
18. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?  It would be a toss up between my friends Tracy or Nick.
19. Did you fall in love in 2011?  With a person?  No.  With my iPad 2, perhaps.
20. How many one night stands in this last year?  None.  I don’t do one night stands.
21. What was your favorite TV program?  One of my favorite new shoes is Rocket City Rednecks on NatGeo, but that’s probably because I’m a space geek.
22. What was the best book(s) you read?  Sadly, most of the books I read this year were text books.  I didn’t have much time for pleasure reading.
23. What were your favorite films of this year?  Ok, this is sad.  I can’t think of any films I saw in 2011 other than stuff off DVDs.  I *finally* got around to watching all of the Harry Potter movies.  LOVED them!
24. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?  My birthday is in February and I have no clue what I did.  I turned 47 this year.
25. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?  Having a special someone to share it with.
26. What kept you sane?  As always, my stitching hobby.
27. What political issue stirred you the most?  Toss up between the ending of the DADT policy and marriage equality.  Hopefully we’ll get there one day with the latter.
28. Who did you miss?  My Gran.  She’s been gone seven years and it still hurts knowing I can’t just pick up the phone and call her.
29. Who was the best new person you met?  My new Weight Watchers leader Jacki.  She rocks!!!
30. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.  Even though it still makes me extremely nervous, I’m better at public speaking than I give myself credit for being.

Until next time …

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I just want to start this post by welcoming anyone who may have found there way here from melgetsfit.com!  I’m glad you’re here.

After giving this a lot of thought for a couple of weeks, I’ve made the decision to merge my two blogs into one here at thedailymel.com.  I originally split my blog a couple of years ago to have one devoted specifically to my weight loss efforts and leaving this one (my original blog) with everything else which mostly consisted of my stitching hobby.

At the time I split the blogs, my life was much less complicated.  Since then, I’ve moved into management at work which equates into many more working hours per week.  I’ve also gone back to college to finish my degree and plan to go on to pursue my MBA after I graduate next year. As a result of how much busier my life is now, I just find it extremely difficult to maintain and update two blogs on a regular basis.  Hence the decision to merge them back into a single blog.  This should enable me to get updates published in a more timely fashion given I’ll only have a single blog to worry about keeping updated.

I accept the fact that this means not all of my readers will be necessarily interested in all of my content now.  Stitching friends might not be interested in health & fitness posts.  Likewise, fitness & weight loss bloggers might not be interested in my posts unrelated to health & fitness topics.  Since I auto-tweet whenever I have new posts, I’ll try to make good use of hashtags to indicate the type of post — i.e. #stitching, #photography, #weightwatchers, #fitblog, etc.  This should help my readers quickly find the posts they find most interesting.

I also plan to maintain a bit of an editorial calendar going forward.  This doesn’t necessarily mean these are the only times during the week I’ll post, but I’ll at least try to get in these items posted at a bare minimum each week. Here is my plan for that along with the accompanying hashtag for those who follow me on Twitter:

• Monday – Stitching update -  Given the bulk of my stitching is done on my weekends, Monday is a great time to provide an update.  (#stitching)
• Wednesday – Weight loss update -  As you probably already know, I’m also a Contributing Writer for The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.  We have the Wednesday Weigh-In feature there, so I’ll post my weight loss updates on Wednesday as part of that. (#weightwatchers)
• Saturday – Saturday PhotoHunt – This is a weekly photo challenge that I recently started participating in again.  A theme is selected for each week and everyone participating posts a photo in keeping with the theme on their blog.  One of my goals for 2012 is to better develop my photography skills and take advantage of the features of my D-SLR camera, so this will be a great way to do that. (#photography)

In closing, I just want to send out a huge “Thanks” to everyone who has been a regular reader of either of my blogs over the years.  I hope you’ll continue with me now at thedailymel.com!

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