A near miss, and keeping track of 200 calories

Hmmm... this was supposed to be a lament, a rant, a bonafide panic post about how the security IT guys cut off our access to Blogger. I came in to work yesterday and fired up the browser as usual, flipped open my favourites to the Blogger dashboard and got the Web filter screen telling me access was denied. I'm sure if the vast majority of you weren't being buffeted by gale force winds and the snowstorm of the year, you'd have heard my wail of dismay. Not only could I not access any Blogger dashboard tools, but any Blogspot comment boxes were blocked as well. I was, to put it mildly, not impressed yesterday.

But hey, look! Here I am. *looks furtively over her shoulder for lurking IT security guys and knocks on wood*

So instead of the tirade against free access to the Web, here's something I've been thinking of sharing with you for a while.

For those of you keeping track, the 5 lbs that I lost did in fact find their way home to me the next week. Well, not all of them. I'm down 2 or 3 lbs net, which is still not bad. I knew the 5 lbs was too good to be true. I'm still a little disillusioned, as 3 lbs of weight loss over six weeks of concerted effort doesn't seem like enough of a reward to sustain my enthusiasm. (And yes, I know it's less about the pounds and more about how I look and feel, but that doesn't seem to be changing much either.)

But for now, I'm still committed to healthy eating and good choices and all that crap. On that subject, I've found a couple of bits worth sharing recently. Have you seen this illustration of what 200 calories looks like? All the pictures display the portion sizes relative to each other, so you can see how much or how little 200 calories gets you. Compare, for example, kiwis to Hershey's Kisses. Very cool.

For those of you who have really been around for a while, you'll remember that I joined weight watchers online summer before last, and our relationship ended on less than amicable terms. But I always did like their online tools, like the food diary, and the database with the calorie and fat counts of various foods. This calorie counter database seems to have all the same tools, but it's free. And you know how I feel about free. Seems pretty comprehensive and very easy to use (although I admit, I've only been playing with it for a couple of days.)

And now, just as I'm ready to hit publish and be grateful to the kind souls in IT security who must have realized the error of their ways and re-granted our access to Blogger, I see by the error message across the bottom of my editing window that my connection to Blogger.com has died yet again.

Universe, are you seriously trying to tell me to move to private domain and blog hosting or what???