Archive for February, 2008

Frogs III: The Return

Amanda February 20th, 2008

Last night, the frog was back in the bog.

I went to get the camera again to take a photo for the blog, but it jumped down the s-bend and ….

…oh well.

No piccie of frog in the bog for the blog. 

Top Five Weight Loss & Fitness Tips

Amanda February 17th, 2008

Well, hello there.

Most of you know that as well as being an anthropologist, for the past two decades (18 years) I’ve worked in the fitness industry. I’ve seen lots of fads come and go, and I think after all this time I have a good idea of what works. So here’s my list of “the Big Five” tips for losing weight and getting fit:

  • Don’t diet!! For most people, a ‘diet’ is something you go on a for a fixed amount of time. You go off the diet and return to your usual lifestyle and the weight starts to go back on. Instead of a diet, I’m advocating a lifestyle change. That’s right: change forever your eating habits and those of your family. Don’t buy soft drinks, juice, chips, cakes unless they’re for special occasions and have only one alcoholic drink per day. Don’t starve, but replace these high fat, high sugar things with low GI carbs, lean meat, fresh fruit and vegetables. I can guarantee  you’ll notice the difference in a few weeks. And throw away your scales. I don’t own any. I went 7 years without being weighed and judged myself from my clothes and how I felt.
  • Eat breakfast every day. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Ask thin people if they eat breakfast. Now ask someone ‘larger’. I’m not sure of the underlying psychology, but there’s a number of studies that have shown that overweight people don’t eat breakfast. Eat breakfast and do it AT HOME – not at Macca’s!
  • Don’t eat starchy, carbohydrate-laden food after lunch. Carbohydrates are not your enemy. They are not inherently bad for you; however, they are ENERGY FOOD and if that energy isn’t being used, then guess what your body does with it? Stores it away for later usage as fat. My rule is: no bread, pasta, potatoes, rice etc with my evening meal. Just vegetables and a slightly larger serve of meat. It takes your body a lot more calories to digest protein than it does carbs – and unless you plan on running night marathons or being a nocturnal animal, you don’t need the quick, easy energy you get from  starchy carbs post-midday.
  • Do weight training exercises at least twice per week. That’s right girls, weights. Why? Because it creates lean body mass. Lean body mass (muscle) burns calories just to exist, including when you’re asleep. Thus, you lose fat without noticing! Weight training also helps ward off osteoporosis and the body’s aging processes, such as sagging skin and muscle loss. There is also evidence to suggest that weight training exercises are associated with increased mental function in the elderly. In other words, you should be doing BODY PUMP (PUMP) or something like it for an hour, 2-3 times per week for the rest of your life. I said lifestyle, didn’t I?
  • Go for a 30 min brisk walk -or preferably a jog- four times per week and one yoga/stretch class per week. Cardiovascular fitness helps to burn off fat, but also decreases stress, assists with stimulating the immune system and can assist with treating depression. You need to do at least 25 min of cardio exercise (where you are just starting to perspire and where you can still talk or whistle) before you exhaust the supply of sugar energy in your blood. Once you’ve done this, you start to use fat tissue as an energy source. Simple. HOWEVER: I mean walk very fast so you sweat and keep it up for 30 min. Not the pace you use in a shopping centre or on the golf course. I mean WALK. If you can jog or run, then do so.  On stretching or yoga. Flexibility -stretching- is that ‘other’ kind of fitness that often gets ignored. Stretching helps prevent injuries and keeps you limber as you get older. When you’re 80, you’ll be able to bend down and get the pegs off the ground you’ve dropped whilst putting clothes on the line. That’s got to be something!

Now if I don’t know you – and you just happened to have stumbled across this post, make sure you check with your doctor before undertaking any exercise if you’re: over 45, are a smoker, have high blood pressure or any heart condition or any medical condition that may impede you in any way.

So the big message is: it’s got to be your LIFE. Fitness and health can’t be a diet you go on to lose weight for your wedding day. That is just setting yourself up to fail. It’s got to be the way you live life.

…Ok. I’m getting off the soapbox now.

Frogs & Spam … Again

Amanda February 16th, 2008

Last night there another frog in the ensuite.

This time it was inside the toilet bowl.  I tried to catch it, but alas, it jumped into the water and headed up the s-bend.

…And was subsequently flushed.

Spam

The ways in which spam can enter this blog are increasingly sophisticated. Whilst I’d whinged about a sudden, massive increase in the amount of spam in the comments field (see post, December 2007) and had taken precautions to stop it, there was still 3 or so messages every day that got in. Brainless little trackbacks which quote excerpts of text and have a web address selling something. Hmm… Trackback spam.

So I have yet again installed a handy little widget called Bad Behaviour. I will test this for a while and see if it works.

Frogs, Jobs & Otherness

Amanda February 14th, 2008

This is a post mainly about frogs.

Actually, it’s a post about the two or three frogs that like our ensuite.

The first night we ‘owned’ (I say ‘owned’ loosely – Westpac Bank has a large interest in our house!) our new house, Rhiannon and her boyfriend, Andrew, slept here.

They were awakened at some ungodly hour by a chorus of croaks. They searched the house, finally tracking down the noise to the ensuite. There, crowded together on the toilet seat, were three small frogs.

They tried to catch some of the frogs -I think they got one- and put it outside. The others jumped into the toilet.

And were flushed.

From time to time since we’ve been here, frogs have reappeared in the ensuite toliet. I usually catch them and put them outside, either in a drain or in a lush, damp potplant. This week, I stumbled out of bed at 5.30am, busting to pee and heard a plop! into the toilet water. I turned on the light and there was a spread-eagled frog clinging to the bottom of the toilet pan, underwater.

So I did what every woman who wakes up first thing in the morning has to do. I peed on the frog and flushed it.  Sorry, but I wasn’t fishing the frog out of the toilet water at 5.30 am.

Last night I went into the ensuite and the frog was back. I assume it was the same frog I’d flushed the previous morning, reincarnated. I decided to take a photo of the frog:

froggie.jpg

 

Then, I tried to catch it. (It subsequently peed all over the floor as frogs do when you scare the bejesus out of them). Caught it. Put it outside in the potplant.

Yet I know it is only a matter of time before the frog (or frogs) are back again.

Why is this a problem?

Well, I don’t hate frogs. I like them, actually. But the little buggers tend to make a god-awful NOISE at 2.33am and wake us up. In the ensuite, it is amplified.

No frogs = better sleep.

Simple.

(BTW. For those who care, these frogs are usually Desert Tree Frogs, Litoria rubella. Having a ranger for a partner is handy when it comes to knowing common scientific names!).

About Jobs

Ok. I am changing jobs. It’s been on the cards for a while. I’m not going very far, nor am I having a career change. I’m having what you might call  ‘a career return’. I’m going back to the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority to work as an anthropologist once more. This hasn’t been an easy decision for me -again my ambition is to be an academic and to specialise in not only environmental anthropology (thus my PhD on joint management) but also to examine the cultural causes of depression, and depression in Aboriginal communities. This is a long term plan, which will need some incubation and attention, beginning in the second half of this year.

I guess I am quite worried that after being in Parks -which is a sizeable department- and having a variety of projects to work on (although I haven’t recently been happy with the nature of the work I’m doing, nor with my ill-defined role), I might be bored doing sacred site clearances and sacred site registrations. There’s also the fun things at Parks, like fauna surveys and doing the odd bit of Larapinta Trail maintenance that I will miss very much. And all the great people I work with.

There’s things I won’t miss, but I won’t say them here.

Anyway, my last day will be, auspiciously, 29th February.

Gary also has something in the pipeline, but more on that when details are confirmed.

So that’s that for a few days.

One Additional Thing You Didn’t Know About Me…

Amanda February 6th, 2008

I am one of only eight people in Australia who HASN’T seen Titanic.

Why They Moved the Big Merino.

Amanda February 6th, 2008

Ok. So it’s old news to some of you, but not to me.

They moved the Big Merino (in Goulburn, NSW) down the road about a kilometre from where it used to be.  It’s right next to MacDonalds, just on the top of the bypass south of the town. This happened in April last year, and was funded by a consortium of local businesses. It was done because with the by-pass of Goulburn by the Hume (in about 1992), visitation to the big woolly boy (actually, as he has no genitals, I’m not so sure it’s male) plummetted.

So they moved him (it). I was shocked when I drove through Goulburn in January and thought I’d investigate.

The Big Merino

Anyway, here’s a link to the Wikipedia page about the move if you’re keen to read more:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Merino

So now you know why they moved the Big Merino. I am sure you were all losing sleep over it.

Perhaps we need a BIG something in Alice Springs to boost our apparently dismal tourism figures? (Thanks no doubt to the fallout from the NT Emergency Intervention). Perhaps we could have:

  • the Big Caterpillar
  • Or the Big Camel.
  • Or the Big Greencan
  • Or the Big Shopping Trolley

(my apologies if you don’t ‘get’ the last two – locals will know what I’m talking about).

Fifty Things You Didn’t Know About Me

Amanda February 5th, 2008

This is total self-indulgence, but it’s kind of therapeutic. So here goes:

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