(no subject)

Hm, it strikes me that evernote is usurping some of my blogging here, just as it has with my Grey Cat site blogging. My Naturalist notebook files took my attention this trip as i document the birds and flora i observed. So many of my photos aren't taken for aesthetics but for documentation. Clipping a bit and saving the image -- blown up enough that it shows the hairy thickened stem behind the California wild rose, or the full image (but rendered quite small) just to get a sense of the growth pattern of the plant -- gets the megapixels off my disk and the image out of Lightroom.

The next trick i plan to deal with the megapixels is an export of some of the cropped images and deletion of the originals.

My belief is that if i keep too much, all will be useless. If i curate, the images will be worth sitting others down to view. I'm finding that so much of the pleasure is in training my eye to be more attentive. I should start listening to the birdsong training audio again: there was a pleasure in the details my ear could hear after a little training.

The elfin forest photos are in Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elainegreycats/tags/20120711elfinforest/

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This back-to-work morning has had it's peace disturbed by the fact that i was invited to a 7:30 am meeting. I am fortunate i noticed it late last week. Has anyone who cared about me tried to contact me to let me know there was a pre-9 am meeting? Like, my manager, also invited? My anger and indignation could expand to fill the entire day. I am trying to focus on the fortunate accident that i saw the meeting invite (something that i will, no doubt, have to manage, so it's good to be at a kick off), and that i will actually be there.

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Last night we walked to the grocery store and trundled home with the groceries. A significant fraction of the expense was a bottle of painkillers and a bottle of antihistamines so it wasn't too strenuous a journey. The exercise was welcome. I am wearing a fitbit these days, a little accelerometer that guesses at how many calories i burn. I was reviewing my vacation week's active time and found a rather active morning for hours. What was that, i wondered, as i couldn't remember walking around town that day. Ah-ha! That was the rise and fall, the slap of the boat, as we sat in the prow to go out whale watching. Ha!

I now have an ankle brace, and i am taking care to ice my ankle after intentional walks. I hope i can keep walking and not damage myself.

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There are a number of ways i can spend money towards more exercise. Will an investment incite more activity? I've been listening to Nudge in which behavioral economists tout "choice architecture" and their sense of "libertarian paternalism." There are a few cases where they call for less regulation (allowing people to waive their right to sue for malpractice) where i don't agree that the change will lead to more choice. They seem to believe that there would always be two options. My experience with recognizing how often i sign away my right to sue and agree to mediation with no option to pay more to keep my right to sue, leads me to suspect that the change would simply lead to various practices only offering services if you waived the malpractice suit right. As they describe how the cost of malpractice insurance does not reward "good" doctors over "bad", i think there's a better and obvious way to fix this issue. (Oh, but that would be regulating the insurance industry.)

I was pondering whether we should buy a proper shopping cart. My instinct is to make do with the dolly and bungee cords until we demonstrate something more than a once a year willingness. The Nudge authors might argue that if i put money up for the cart now, i may be more motivated to use it as humans are more loss averse than reward attracted.

I suppose it's my loss aversion that motivates me to want to see if we would actually follow through.