Seen in SoHo, New York City.

I rode a Segway for the first time at The Next HOPE in New York. Upon seeing the pictures Aaron took of me, my first thought was, "Look how puffy my arms are!" Only secondarily were ideas of a.) how much fun it was to ride a Segway, or b.) how awesome it was to wear a cute girly-cut shirt, because I can now.

Aaron and I had dinner and drinks with a couple in NYC whom we hadn't seen in person in about four years. Their first comment to us was, "You're so slim!" Sure, I've lost 30 pounds since I saw them last, but Aaron's lost over twice that much. Mentally, I just assumed that his massive weight loss was making us as a couple look thinner. Hey, I'll take what I can get!

I watched a TED talk last night (via Whore of All the Earth) about happiness. In a nutshell, psychologist Dan Gilbert posits that the human brain has the capability to synthesize happiness. It comes off like sour grapes... until he relates the results of an experiment with amnesiacs, which supports the hypothesis that this is an innate function of the human brain, rather than a conscious decision to just be happy with what one has.

I related an incident to my Weight Watchers meeting today, one that happened a few months back, in which a co-worker asked me, "So, have you always been overweight?" Rarely have I witnessed the entire meeting room being so taken aback. They all insisted that the comments were harassment, that I should contact HR — but I disagree. At the time, I actually didn't think much of that particular comment, and merely responded that, yes, I have always been overweight.

I've had a hard time wrapping my head around the Fat Acceptance movement — not because I think weight should be a reason to discriminate, but because I've always been overweight, and have wanted to be a "normal" weight instead. I have a hard time accepting myself at the size I am, whether it's 80 pounds overweight or just 20 or 25. I can't imagine — literally can't fathom — being obese and seriously happy about it, or even OK with it... because I wasn't. I'm still not, even though I'm only "overweight" now.

Although I'm no longer an active practitioner of Zen Buddhism, I still appreciate and adhere to many of the teachings. One of these, one that helps me considerably, is the concept of non-attachment. I'm not attached to any given outcome. It's like ambivalence, but not. It's not basing my happiness on this or that. This weight or that weight. This job or that job. Kids or no kids. This city or that city. Every outcome has pros and cons, and I don't need to prefer one over the other. Either can make me happy.

I can be happy as I am now, or I can be happy 20 pounds lighter. Preferably both.

"It's so pretty," she'd murmur as we stood together at the screen door. "Look how pretty the clouds are."

It was always dark — but the dark of an encroaching storm, rarely of night. The mist would barely brush our faces, along with a sweet, cool breeze.

When I got a little older — say, school-age, or close to it — we'd watch for the flashes of lightning, then count: one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand (which I later learned is backward from how most people do it), then either nod knowingly or jump, startled, when the thunder finally rumbled or cracked its reply.

"That must have been close to the high school," said Mom one time. Usually it was much farther away: nine miles, about.

I grew to love thunderstorms. The smell of them, the sound, the beautiful contrast between the clouds and the land. The beauty, the drama. When we moved to Florida, I discovered that it would thunderstorm every afternoon during part of the year. I would sit in my bedroom, listening to music or reading, smelling the rain and watching it sheet down the open casement window.

Later on, I learned that my mother had purposefully instilled in me that love of storms, because she had been made so afraid of them by one particular incident in her childhood. Even so, I'm glad she did.

Thunderstorms, to me, are moments when I can stand at the open door, or sit on the front porch, or gaze out an open window, and let my senses take over. I breathe in that clean-smelling air, feel the mist on my face, and I'm four years old again, and there's nothing but me and the rain.

As seen from the sheltered upper deck of the bus, during the second part of our Downtown Tour in New York City. Luckily, the pre-Chinatown part of the tour wasn't as rainy and dismal.

I have lots of to-do lists. I have a Moleskine Piccadilly notebook full of itemized tasks I want to do sooner or later. I have an archived version of my old Palm Desktop with leftover to-do items. I have text files where I tried to consolidate some of my old scraps of paper full of lists, and I still have said scraps of paper full of lists from years ago.

I haven't found a satisfactory way to organize all these maybe-somedays and to-do-this-weeks. Maybe Epic Win will save me.

From the Epic Win website:

Our lives are full of quests. Remember that birthday card, send that email, or drag ourselves to the gym on a regular basis.

Trouble is, sometimes we’re having too much fun doing other virtual stuff like hunting down rare items in World of Warcraft or leveling-up in Facebook games to remember the stuff we’re supposed to be doing.

EpicWin is an iPhone app that puts the adventure back into your life. It’s a streamlined to-do list, to note down all your everyday tasks, but with a role-playing spin.

Rather than just mentally ticking off your chores, completing each one improves and develops your character in an ongoing quest to level-up, gain riches, and develop skills.

By getting points for your chores it's easier to actually get things done. We all have good intentions but we need a bit of encouragement here and there. Doing the laundry is an epic feat of stamina so why not get stamina points for it?!

Watch as your avatars stats develop in ways to represent your own life. Will you be a Maiden of Juggled Priorities, or a King of Win? The lifestyle you lead will decide.

This app will either be Epic Win or Epic Fail. I'm not sure which yet. I can see me either finding it amusing for a week, then deciding it's dumb; or getting WAY more into it than I should, and breaking down my tasks into stupid little sub-tasks, just to level up my guy.

Until Epic Win is released, though, I think I'll stick with the Piccadilly-to-Google-Tasks method I'm using now. As long as I can get one little thing done a night (e.g. cleaning off the dining room table or changing the bed linens), I feel pretty good about myself.