major milestones

I was going to make this a nice thoughtful sort of post, but I’m too damned sick and tired to write anything that doesn’t sound inane. So I’ll just celebrate my own damned self without any pretty words.

I have, since October 7th, now lost 20 pounds. That’s a pretty significant milestone, and I’m pretty happy about it. Ted said to me last week, “Catie, those pants are falling off your butt!”–and those were the size 12s! And Shaun said, quite tentatively, a couple of days ago, “You look like you’ve lost some weight,” and I said, “I’ve lost 20 pounds, in fact,” and he said, “No way!” He’d been thinking I looked like I lost weight for the last couple of weeks, but thought it’d be rude to say so. I assured him you could always safely tell a woman she looked like she’d lost weight. :)

So I’m at 168 now. This puts me in what I think of as my college weight range, although for at least half of college I was in the 170s. I am very, very pleased with this, and am feeling all the more inspired to keep taking weight off. I’ve started walking a bit more (although today’s not a good example), which is made easier by the fact that it’s warming up and walking the coastal trail is always nicer than doing neighborhood circuits or using the treadmill.

You know, I started walking regularly just a little less than two years ago, because I went for a mile-long walk and by the time I was done with it my feet were *killing* me, and I thought that was pretty pathetic. It was a couple of weeks later that I heard about the Walk to Rivendell challenge, which struck me as a fun thing to do, and since then I’ve walked about 950 trackable miles (I only count deliberate walks as part of my Rivendell mileage, not wandering around the store and stuff). I had to change my eating habits before walking helped me start losing weight, but I can certainly tell the difference now between a few miles of walking a day and not; I can maintain my weight without walking, but I only lose if I start to walk again.

My other major milestone for the day is that I sent off OPERATION: CARDINAL, the first book I’ve ever written entirely on spec, this afternoon. I find this exciting and alarming and pretty cool. I’m looking forward to getting editorial comments on it, because I’m sure it can be improved, but overall I’m pretty pleased with the story, and there are parts I actively like.

So. A momentous day, in its way, and in celebration I’m going to spend the next seven days *reading*. I have dozens upon dozens of books on my TBR shelves. I’m going to clear out as many of them as I can over the next week, which will be a very enjoyable task indeed. But don’t expect to hear a lot from me for the next seven days. :)

miles to Rauros Falls: 23.5