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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The assignment for today’s 30 Day Blog Challenge is to post a photo of your best friend.  I’m very fortunate to have THREE best friends.  Yes, I know it’s technically not possible to have multiple instance of a superlative, but I do, so deal with it.

I know I posted this one recently in my travel meme, but it’s a perfect photo for this as it contains two of my three BFFs, Terri and Tracy.  This was taken in October 2008 when we all went on vacation together in Hawai’i.

Next is a photo of  Nick from November 2007 when we went on a Mexican cruise together.  I took this pic of him as we were on the tender returning to the ship after a fun day in Cabo San Lucas.

Until next time …

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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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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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This will be my final post here at melgetsfit.com.  From now on, you can find me here:

thedailymel.com

Thanks to everyone who has been a regular reader here for the past couple of years.  I hope you’ll continue with me now at thedailymel.com!

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