Storm Surge

I aspire to be competent and self sufficient, to be the one who is in a position to help others who need it. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but after disasters and catastrophic events, I get motivated to further equip myself and prepare for the next event.  I start by ensuring I am prepared, and then think about how to support others.

I lived 25 years in the upper midwest, where it snowed and got very cold (-27F!) and we had thunderstorms and drought. I think the power was off for maybe 25 minutes total during all that time, and never ever was there an excused absence from work. I have always been a camper and sailor so I had some basics like a warm sleeping bag and tent, and thought that's all we needed. But it changed when I moved to DC in the mid-1990s.

I started taking preparation seriously in all the hype about Y2K back at the turn of the millenium. I actually learned about the basic computer programming problem way back in the 1980's (as did everyone else who had anything to do with mainframe operational computers), but no-one did anything about it until time was running out. Then, there was a lot of hype in the media for the general public, but I had a bit of a peek behind the scenes. Working at a government agency that provides safety oversight for complex industries, it was a major focus at work. Contrary to some press reports, it was unlikely the laws of physics would be repealed and airplanes would suddenly plunge out of the sky as the clock ticked over, but there were potentially serious issues of communications and data processing. Supposedly everything was done but how well can you debug the complex interactions of real-life massive systems? So that year, my Christmas presents to the family were a Coleman camping stove (with 3 weeks worth of propane), sleeping bags and other camping equipment. The rest of the family didn't take it seriously, and so I filled my basement with big water jugs and some shelf stable foods, and was comforted to know there was a plan. As it turns out, of course, unless you were playing the slots in Delaware, there was no issue.

In my first three years in this leafy older suburb, the water main broke three times and the power was off for hours every time the wind blew. So definitely, there was a need for some level of preparedness. I started collecting candle lanterns, using them as decorations, but stockpiling lots of candles in the basement. I got a windup radio as my premium for the public radio fund drive.

And then September 11th came.

The hysteria in DC lasted for more than a year. We were a target, and the pressure and reminders were constant. There were the anthrax incidents and we all got trained on how to open our irradiated mail. At a Christmas party that year I met someone who had been rushed out of the Capitol when Senator Daschle's contaminated mail was found, without her purse or keys, not allowed back in for eight months.  Some tiny little 2-seater planes violated the no-fly zone over downtown DC, and congressional staff ran screaming into the streets. I was aware of the plans for relocating to an undisclosed location in the event of more attacks and participated in drills and exercises for various scenarios.

In this atmosphere I made sure I had my canned goods and water ready. I made evacuation plans - a close friend of mine lives over the first mountain west, and I made sure the whole family knew the address and phone number. I bought a motorcycle at least partly to make sure I would be mobile in the face of gridlock.

Isabel struck in September 2003, on a Thursday. We were more than a week without power then. But we had twelve hours of daylight, very comfortable temperatures, and the office was open every day from the following Monday, so there was power for charging. Gasoline was not an issue. The supermarket opened and food was available, though ice was mostly not available, and we through away a lot of food. Except for that, truly, it was no more than inconvenient.

Never-the-less it did spur me to enhance our readiness. Compact florescent lighting had come along, and I added some battery operated lanterns.  I added another radio with rechargeable power. The lanterns and radio were also useful on the boat. Batteries were stockpiled to make them available. I rotated and kept current the water jugs in the basement, and kept a couple of cases of water bottles current, taking older ones up to the boat where they would be drunk quickly. Portable 12-volt batteries became widely available. These are batteries you plug into the wall to charge, and they can be used for starting your car. But they also have plugs right on them - 12 volt round cigarette lighter type, and some have built in inverters to take house plugs (for low power things only). I got one for my house, and one for my brother-in-law (who is often involved in jumping cars.)

The winter of 2009-2010 was very very snowy. We didn't lose power in either big snowstorm (December and February) now remembered as Snowmegeddon, but life was extremely disrupted and we couldn't drive. We were forced to rely on the supplies in the house for a few days, and we did just fine. We have a good collection of hats and mittens, I had just bought new long johns, and I dug up snow pants for the kids. They had adequate jackets, but snow boots were lacking for them. I wrote about how the storm made me want to eat blubber here.  Going to the store before the storm showed empty shelves, emphasizing again how important it was to keep some stuff in the house. The big improvement I vowed to add to the preparedness category after struggling through four foot drifts to get from my house to the rest of the family a half mile away was snow shoes.  Again, not just an emergency item - something to use for fun - but makes me feel good to have another option for mobility.

Then in January 2011 we lost power for several days, after an ice storm. It was cold.  I wrote about it here.  I was extremely unhappy about being so cold, though again I went to work every day and charged things and got warm. Stores and restaurants opened quickly. But before fall came again I added a wood heater to the house. In essence, its an airtight wood-stove that sits inside the existing fireplace box, and sends the heat from the wood into the house instead of up the chimney.  With glass doors to watch the dancing flames, it is at least as charming as ever was the actual open fireplace. It supposedly would heat the whole house. Wouldn't you know it - last winter was the one that never came, and I only used it a few times, and never really tested it out.

We were hot and miserable after this summer's derecho, out of power from Friday through Wednesday in 100 degree weather. But again, while this was massive, the outages were local, and near-by stores and work and restaurants were open as refuges from the heat and for charging. I fired up the propane stove in the back yard for making my morning coffee, but didn't really try to do any other cooking. But cell-phone power management was an issue. But, cell phone communications were always available, which gives me the internet. My brother-in-law had a hole in his roof from a branch, but we didn't discover it until a rain storm later on when water dripped through into a bedroom. Off to the hardware store for a tarp to make our own quick temporary repair. Now he has a brand-new roof and gutters, thanks to his insurance.

I began to think about what it would mean to have some kind of a wider spread disruption, one caused  by something other than downed wires.  I invested in a rechargeable power brick, one that could not only recharge an iphone several times, but also had enough current to recharge the more-demanding ipad. I also bought a camper's solar panel, which can charge some very low power electronics directly, or it can recharge AA batteries which then can re-charge an iphone. My immediate reason for investing in both these items was to use them on a voyage on my boat planned for October, which had to be aborted for non-weather reasons.

Storm supplies - heavy on the sugar!

For Sandy last week I brought in wood to keep it dry, and stocked up several days in advance with water and shelf stable food and started eating up what was in the freezer. I made sure everything that could be charged was charged, including the battery on the Vespa to increase my mobility. I did an ATM for extra cash. Because I just ran out of gumption, I didn't top off the car's gas tank. I kept the phone and ipad on the chargers so they would start out full when the power went off. I talked to my neighbor late Sunday - he acquired a not-quite-whole-house generator (involves flipping many circuit breakers) and was ready to offer assistance if it was necessary. I assured him I was set for the time being - in fact, I had a basement full of candles in case we had a breakdown in the market economy and we needed to move to barter. But of course, the lights hardly even flickered. Which is good, because the water did come through the walls of the basement, and I have an electric pump and a shopvac that helped me keep damage at bay.

As I read about the wide spread devastation, I am spurred to be even more prepared. Total devastation - from fire or other source - that means moving out - is so scary to me I'm not going to focus on that now. Instead I'll think about a longer term disruption where we hunker down.

Shelter first. I need a lot more firewood - what I have would only last a few days. I should have a couple of week's worth to feel secure. I'm also going to buy a couple of blue tarps in different sizes to keep in the basement - I've got a hammer and roofing nails - they just seem like they could be handy for roofs and for other things.

Food. What kinds of food supplies are best? I try to buy stuff I would actually use, so I can keep rotating stock. I like milk boxes, but their shelf life is less than a year, so I got powdered milk. I have broth (good for a couple of years) and plain pasta a-plenty, as well as white rice (the brown stuff goes rancid in weeks). I'm thinking dried tortellini could be useful. Tuna cans for sure. Spam? Surely not. That cold cereal is good for at least a couple of years. Water I've got covered, though maybe not enough for very long.  (On the other hand, I have a ceramic water filter in my camping kit, and there is a (very urban and nasty) stream just a few yards away.)

Transport.  Top off the tank in the car and Vespa, for sure, and make sure the temperamental Italian machine is charged and working.  But I'm thinking bicycle. I have one, don't ride it, I ought to make sure it has air in the tires and works.

Communication. Cellphones, check. But what happens if they don't work? Cellphone coverage in the devastated areas is definitely an issue. Remember family radios?  They were all the rage a decade or so ago. I'm thinking acquiring at least a pair of radios with a range of a couple of miles would be useful. I've got a hand-held marine radio, (and an aviation one, for that matter) but I could see use for the family radios on the boat or other trips, so they are now on my list. They seem cheaper and more practical than a satellite phone.

BTW, I got the idea for the radios from this article which came my way via Boing-Boing.

Obviously, my focus is on my family in all this. But I was inspired recently by a Ted Talk, for a way to get organized, to use social media like twitter and facebook, to provide actual specific and useful information after disaster strikes. The website is here. This would be right up my alley - this is what I did after September 11 at work (organize things) this is what I did after my sister died (organize things) and I could see myself doing this on a wider scale if it were necessary.

Places of Power

A seriously bad day in a seriously bad season... and the busyness in my head needed to be calmed.

I am not religious, but I believe there are benefits to the outward forms of ritual, retreat, and reflection. So I went off the air and did what I needed to do to get centered and calm. There is no grave for my sister, and so when I need to commune with her, I need to go to a still place in my mind where I can sense her quiet presence. Too jangled to sit and meditate, what I need is outdoor exercise. And I need to write.

I have places I go to do this, and they are my places of power. One of my favorites is Great Falls National Park, just 20 minutes from my house. So there I was, on this grey, raw morning, as it spit rain from time to time.  I fled my life and all its complications, needing to just be for a while.

I needed to walk and walk and walk. No facebook, no email, no tunes. Just me and my feet. And the camera.  My thoughts flitted from bad things at work, to the still raw loss of Mary, to current teen angst. Three hours of walking, along the C&O towpath, never far from the roaring hurricane-swollen Potomac. Gradually, the stress in my body and mind began to wear away, as I tired myself out.

I am never away from my camera, and it helps focus me.  Truly, puns aside. I am not seeking the pictures as I walk, but when they find me, I lose myself in the process. Compose, adjust the exposure, recompose, move two steps to the left, change the aperture, hold the camera tilted up, go for a different shutter speed... My camera is a pocket camera easily fitting in one hand, but with total manual control, and I lose myself in it. On my way back, the path over the rapids to overlook the falls themselves had been opened up, and I was totally awestruck. The flow was there, at the end of the walk, as I struggled to capture the force and power of the falls with a still camera. I was finally taken completely out of myself, and was just in that moment.

I picked this place today because it is also connected to Mary.  This is one of her favorite family photos, taken on a great hot summer day in this park.You can't tell, but Mary is pregnant with Clara here (so she is actually in this picture, too!)

I've been here to mourn Mary before as well - this was taken on her birthday in February 2010.

Once I got back to the car, I wrote quite a while, talking things through with her. I was much better equipped to have what was a really crucial conversation about college with my our boy afterwards. It really was all about him, and not about me any more.

And I tracked, too.

Storm Siege

I woke bored and hungry, not a good combination for what's going to be at least 36 hours housebound. I'm starting out trying to counter the boredom with taste.



This is a morning antipasto. Shelf stable hard salami, part of my storm supplies, grape tomatoes, and white Stilton with apricots.

I've been racing to get ready for three days, and now all I can do is wait. I'm about to lose myself in a book for a couple of hours, with the thought I'll probably still have power through today so I can cook meat from the freezer later.

I may try to update during the day. Blog question: if I periodically update in the same post, do the updates go at the top or bottom?

IPhone uPdate

Cook-free day

Yesterday was awfully busy, I was on the go from 6 am. I have set things up to make food convenient without being too terrible. I managed to deal with only feeding myself- not the family- and everything was prepared.




This is MyFitnessPal for yesterday. I got a hit on every barcode- and 100% of yesterday's food was barcoded.

Maybe a fuller review of MFP at another time but a couple of quick impressions: estimating food made from scratch is made more difficult by the very large database because the numbers vary a lot. Also, I think it may be giving me too much credit for the activity transferred from my Bodymedia armband. But MFP sure gets all Trader Joe's codes, most of which Weight Watcher's does not have.

iPhone uPdate

Resolutions, Plans and Strategies

Just a quick update, to fill in status on a few things.

I made a resolution to leave my building at least once a day during the week day, back when school started in September.  I'm doing that pretty well. I've been conscious of only two days when I chose to stay inside to eat my brown bag lunch and just work. My side of the National Mall has many fewer restaurants than the other, including much sparser pickings for sandwich and salad lunch spots.  That has been remedied by food truck heaven. It turns out my corner is the largest concentration of the new food trucks in the city most days.  We get a solid dozen different choices each day.  Net effect on me? I walk less and eat worse. Food trucks have sandwiches, curries and kebabs and stir fries over rice, and cup cakes and frozen yogurt. Sometimes tacos. Almost no-one offers a salad.  Yesterday's butter chicken (with spinach and cauliflower sides) was not the best I'd ever had, but it was darn good and spicy enough I needed the rice.

Running?  Not so much. I tried to motivate myself by signing up for more races, but I went through a spate of feeling truly lousy and feeble. I even tried to run, and just couldn't do it. Maybe it was a mild virus, because the worst has passed and my energy is a bit up and I really want to do it. But the pace at work right now does not permit getting in any extra exercise. So the Dead Man's Run I signed up for? I went to Historic Congressional Cemetery and picked up my t shirt, and walked around a bit, and called it a night.  Very cool T though - I'll be wearing it on Halloween. Perhaps I'll try to shuffle around the block on Sunday.

Snacking at night? Well, after just a few days, I've got a good record. But it may not really count - I leave the kids house each night (earlier than usual this week because I've brought work home every night), brush my teeth and that's that. But it doesn't count because before tonight, there weren't actually any snacks in my house. At least no chocolate ones. But I stopped at Trader Joe's to stock up before the storm, and a significant amount of my favorite junk food found its way into my cart and my house. (All shelf-stable of course, for when the power goes out.) So at this minute, the only thing keeping me from noshing is my minty-fresh breath. So based on a small sample, this strategy is working. I put everything away, out of sight, and none of it is opened.  I know from my reading on willpower, that it definitely saps your reserves to have to see something reminding you, and each time quell the impulse to reach for it. Hopefully, I won't hear it calling me from inside the cupboard.  (Which maybe begs the question, why did I buy it if I don't want to eat it? I'm not sure I'm up to exploring that question at this moment.)

And another new strategy - track and get social! I am currently using MyFitnessPal to track, and I've connected with a couple of friends (hoping to connect with more! let me know if you are in) and I'm liking it. It has a good database, a pretty good interface, it syncs between my iphone, ipad and computer, and it even sucks in my data from my little armband calorie-expenditure device.

Enough for now. I'm up at five to go move my boat before the hurricane gets here.

Night Cravings

I've got a real issue with night cravings. I can be very conscious and eat my vegetables and fruit all day, but my evenings end up home alone, and I snack. Sometimes a snack a lot.  By a lot, I mean I might eat popcorn, followed by a bowl of cereal, followed by a few or more than a few of my favorite Dove Dark Promises.  This much is unusual, luckily, but it happened.  And every single night, there are these kinds of incidents.  The munchies just consume me. If it was a bad day, I'll even eat until its uncomfortable, and get off the couch to search the kitchen for more.

Reviewing various food logs over the past few months makes it clear - this is the danger zone. This is the behavior I need to target.  The other big danger zone is late afternoon at work. I'm more successful at not eating too much then, only because the options are very bad.  But I get restless and want to have something in my mouth. I have been known to visit the vending machines. Pretzels and oreos and chocolate chip cookies, and even fritos, have been known to emerge.

I'm trying to target this behavior and change it for both time zones.  I'm very aware of both, but my strategies will be different.  For work, I should have fancy waters and fruit.  Apples can be my savior there. Maybe even carrots. Something that will enter my mouth and let me know I'm eating something.

But evenings, I think I have to just say no. During the Big Loss fifteen years ago, I was on an eating plan that had a wacky idea - the evening meal could involve any food I wanted, in any quantity I wanted, but it all had to be consumed in one hour. After that, nothing for the rest of the day. This was the original Carbohydrate Addict's diet, and it was based on some fairly dubious theories on managing insulin. The idea was carbs cause you to release insulin, which makes you want more carbs. But there mentioned a second release of insulin if you keep eating for a long time, and that was more damaging. I haven't seen anyone else in the diet world ever think there was anything valid about the one-hour time limit.

On this diet, there was no snacking at all.  And they said it was better to skip breakfast than to eat the wrong foods for breakfast. Starches were restricted to dinner only. Breakfast and lunch needed to be protein focused - small amounts of vegetables but very little fruit was allowed. Dinner was to be divided into thirds - protein, vegetables, and starch (including dessert). You could eat as much as you wanted, but you had to match your carb intake with equal sized portions of meat and veggies and finish in an hour. Fat?  Not an issue.  It just came along for the ride with the meat and vegetables. So a typical day for me could include eggs and bacon for breakfast, chicken caesar salad for lunch (no croutons and dressing checked for carb count), and steak and broccoli with sour cream and parmesan for dinner, with a brownie or cookies for dessert.  Then, the kitchen was shut down.

Even if the insulin release theory is hooey, the fact is I was able to stick to this diet for eighteen months and I lost (peak to valley, even if only for one day on each end) 50 pounds. I went about a year with no plateau, just a steady loss. And today I'm still 35 pounds below that peak.

So I think closing the kitchen is the thing. I should go brush my teeth right after dinner and not allow anything else to pass my lips.  Except for my take-before-bed cholesterol medicine, of course, which will involve a high-risk trip into the kitchen.  I'm going to give this a try for a few days and see how it goes.

I have intermittently been reading The Power of Habit, which I wrote about here.  I have a bad habit in the evenings, and I need to break the habit.  What the book says, is that you cannot actually break a habit.  But you can overlay an old habit with a new habit.  I need a new cue, response, reward cycle to replace the "come home, flop on couch with snack (which is its own reward)" cycle. Come home, brush teeth, and flop on couch to .... watch Dr. Who (my latest streaming video vice)?  Shop on internet? Need to get a reward built into this. Maybe tally my calories and rejoice they are so low, using my fun gadgets.

Hmmm....

Stuck

I've been stuck forever. Maybe I should call it maintenance.

This graph shows 2011 and 2012. The center is 150 pounds, and the red lines show the band from 148 to 152.  I hit 152 pounds on the way down on January 11, 2011, and 150 on February 5. Since then, my body has really settled in at that weight.

First, the perspective. I started this blog, and this weight loss cycle, in January 2010.  My peak was TWENTY-EIGHT POUNDS higher than the 150 plateau. Look at this:

So this is the good news, and it is really good news.  The weight I've been for the past two years is less than the weight I was for a good part of the last twenty-nine years I've been keeping track. I don't hate the way I look, and my wardrobe has also been able to stabilize. I take pleasure in shopping and looking in the mirror. This is the good news - but perhaps being content has caused me to lose motivation to do more.

Look at these patterns again:

There are some conclusions to be gained by studying these patterns, especially when I go back and look at food diaries, etc.

The set point seems to work both up and down - I can lose weight, but it pops back on again. But I can indulge and drift and eat more and exercise less, and the weight only slowly adds up. When I start paying attention, a small amount of weight comes off easily and quickly.


What this looks like to me is I can only lose weight (or start losing weight, at least) by a blitz.  Without a blitz, my weight will gradually drift upwards.  What is a "blitz"?  It is tracking, and cutting back seriously to stay within the limits. And it is exercising.  But I've fallen off the wagon after a couple of weeks of blitz, and inexorably the weight starts to creep back up.

So do I want to pay attention enough to do a blitz? Right now, as we embark on the dark dreary eating season?  When I've not been seriously unhappy about how I look?

This is a question I'm not sure I can answer easily or at once. It will take time to decide, and time to prove it. But drifting upwards without making a decision would be REALLY stupid.  And the fact is I have been feeling very bad recently. Work stress and teen stress is taking a major toll on me. I can't separate out the bad way my body and mind feel as being caused by stress, or by the relatively unhealthy way I've been eating and not exercising. Because of some extraordinary stresses, I've been indulging myself with silly sweets and carbs, and with passing up the need to move. But I need to understand that these things are not indulgences - they are not taking care of myself, they are only making things worse.

If I know its going to be a stressful day at work, I need to understand that it will be better if I get some exercise in first, and better still if I eat well and deliciously.

Today, a sunny warm day, I went for a beginner's interval walk/run. I'm about to head to the grocery store, and I want to make healthy choices for the coming week.  I'm not prepared to take a vow yet, but I am willing to make some baby steps towards getting things back under control.

I am clear on this - I want to at a minimum maintain in this range.  I am NOT going to drift back up. I am NOT.

Let me close with a link to Jeanette Fulda, a blogger I follow who is often an inspiration.  I echo the sentiments in this post of hers:  Thanks for Sticking Around.