...and so another large gap in the blog comes to an end.
Let me just say that I'm tired - most of the time, these days. I'm also hungry practically all the time. Of course, with my luck, the latter condition - due largely to the fact that I am pregnant and nursing at the same time - coincided with an assignment for my online nutrition class to track my food intake for a week. Now, it isn't so hard to just write down what you eat, for a while, really. The tough part was having to figure out all the nutritional information. I had to look everything up in an appendix of the textbook, because not only did the instructor want a couple values that are often not listed on labels (not that the labels help, if you're making stuff from scratch, at home, anyway), but we also had to provide the page number of the listing. I have to wonder if he's really going to cross check all of those, but... where was I? Oh yes... for the week, I had more than 150 line items on my log. Furthermore, I apparently seldom have exactly one serving of anything, so I have to multiply every value in the list of things we're supposed to log by a scale factor. Then, I had to put it into a specific (and rather cumbersome to use) form, provided by the instructor. Let me just say, at this point, that I lost track of how much time I spent on this assignment (I even pressed Arazyr into service, entering data into the final form, as I calculated it... bet he regrets asking if there was anything he could do to help, on what was intended to be his way to bed), but if it took even 5 minutes per line item, to log the food, look it up, do the calculations, and enter it into the final form (original logging and calculations were done in a spreadsheet, just to ease my lot, a bit), that would be more than 12.5 hours. This class is supposed to require 18 hours per week from the student. This week not only included the aforementioned assignment, but also reading and assessment quizzes on 3 chapters, required participation in a couple of forum discussions, and an exam. Anybody else see anything wrong with this picture? I have to wonder if anybody else had as tough a time as I did, or whether my current ravenous state was the primary problem. Anyway, it was grueling. The fact that I got a late start to the study week, because on Monday, my computer wouldn't turn on, and I spent a chunk of time at my parents' house Monday and Tuesday, as my dad and I got it working, again, didn't help any. By the time it was done, I was about ready to hit anybody who said "dietary log". Fortunately, that's not the sort of thing that people tend to say, randomly. I seriously figured that the assignment had totally annihilated any desire I'd ever have to track nutritional information, ever again. The weirdest part? Earlier today, I had a mild desire to log onto My Calorie Counter, and log my info... I resisted.