Flying

Another joy of mine is aviation. After a hospital visit today, I went flying for about an hour. I took a teenager from church with me - I let him try the controls for awhile. He did well. It was an absolutely beautiful day for flying.

Also, I planted a tree.

Exercise and Fitness

I mentioned that I run/jog almost every day. This is part of my weight loss and fitness program I started on February 8. I'm using the greatest weight loss site on the Internet: calorie-count.com. It is awesome, and its philosophy is simple: a calorie is a calorie, no matter what form it takes. Eat fewer calories than you use, and you will lose weight. There are 3500 calories in a pound. If you eat 500 calories less than you use per day, you will lose 500 x 7 or 3500 calories in a week, which is one pound. It simply works.

With my calorie watching and my running, I eat about 700 calories less than I burn each day, which works out to 4900 calories per week, which is 1.4 pounds. And it turns out that I have lost exactly 1.4 pounds per week since Feb. 8. So far, I have lost 16 pounds. You can see my weight loss chart - it speaks for itself. The blue line is my actual daily weight (the fluctuations are simply water weight), and the green line is my trend line.

It's actually fun to do this, and I'm learning a lot about nutrition and fitness. I have a nifty heart rate monitor that I use every time I exercise.

Joys of nature

I ran for about an hour this evening, and encountered a couple of things that were sources of joy for me. Actually, I have been running almost every night for 4-5 miles. I'm a night person, and I enjoy running at night, even though it's hard to see. I've been running since Feb. 8, and it's been neat to watch spring unfold. Tonight I was able to smell all sorts of tree blossoms along my route.

But the best part of tonight's run was the bird I heard. Keep in mind that this was at 11:30 pm. The bird was the Northern Mockingbird, which sometimes sings at night. It is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world, and I just stopped and listened for a few minutes. It has been a few years since I've heard a night Mockingbird. Go here to find out more about this great bird, and here to listen to a sample song.

The next bird I'm waiting to hear this spring is my all-time favorite: the Wood Thrush (description and song). I should be hearing it in our woods any afternoon now.

Other birds I love hearing in the spring include the Catbird (already heard and seen in our yard) and the Brown Thrasher (not yet).

Two weeks ago in the Smoky Mountains I saw a life bird - the Black-throated Green Warbler.