faboo mama

Despite the fact that my post on Social Networkouts went largely ignored, I’ve decided to go ahead to something about it anyway. The American Heart Association is sponsoring National Start Walking Day on April 8th.  All they’re asking for is 30 minutes of walking from you that day.  Why 30 minutes?

Taking just 10 minutes three times a day to walk will help you live longer. In fact, studies show that just one hour of vigorous exercise will increase your life expectancy by two hours. It makes sense to walk more and eat well — to live longer. (AHA)

So we are going to meet at Echo Park at 6:30pm and walk the perimeter of the park.  That way even those who can’t make it until 7pm will still be able to get some walk time in with the group.  Runners are encouraged too.  Everyone who participates will get a sticker.

Where to go:

We will meet at the entrance to the park at the corner of Glendale Blvd. and Park Ave., just south of Sunset Ave. We will be walking the sidewalk around the park, so meet up with us at any point.
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Please click through as this shows you the start point for our meetup.

What to bring:

• Comfortable walking/running shoes
• Water or sports drink
• Healthy snack
• Towel
• Happy attitude

I am open to any other suggestions you may have.  

Please RSVP at Upcoming so that I’ll be sure to have enough stickers.  Tell your friends & family and please share this post with anyone you know in LA.

Check back here as I post videos and other health tips leading up to the big day. ?See you at the park!

Meetups of users of various online communities have been happening for some time now. In just the past 6 years, I’ve met women from a birth club board for lunch playdates, have potluck dinners with people from political sites, teas with online friends from gardening forums and recently met up with FriendFeed users at local burger joint. But you see the problem; it’s all involving food. I’d say that 95% of the meetups I’ve had with people has been surrounding food. ?On one hand, good food and drink are great social lubricators. Beyond the topic discussed on these sites what other conversational ice breaker is there that doesn’t seem awkward and insincere. Recently, I’ve been wondering why there aren’t more meetups of an active sort among these groups.

When you get into the personal realm in these online communities, the topic of weight loss and food issues come up pretty frequently. People share recipes, discuss what they had for dinner or talk about their time at the gym. Yet, when we get together our first thought is what restaurant to meet at or is it a potluck. Why not do something different? Why not make a meetup where we all take a yoga class or just a simple hike in Griffith Park??

At LA Metblogs, Will Campbell organized a day long through LA. I wish I could have made it but either I was busy healing or just busy. This guy Mike organized a walk through LA to celebrate his 10 years as an Angeleno. It became an annual event and last year was the 3rd year of Great LA Walk. The same day as the FriendFeed meetup, the Los Angeles Flickr group organized a photowalk around Union Station. These are all great ways to get some activity in a meetup.?

Many would suggest that I search sites like Active or Gyminee to find people who’d be willing to do an activity. I’ve tried that, but since I’m not active in those communities it’s a bit hard. ?To make it more frustrating for me is that most people who put Los Angeles in their profiles live in OC, the Valley or the west side. ?There’s nothing really local for me here in Northeast Los Angeles. The few people I’ve found in Pasadena put up posts like, “Looking for a partner for quick 10 mile trail run at 5am.” Yeah…10 mile, trail, and 5am effectively exclude me. ?

My logic in wanting to do a meetup around a physical activity has a lot to do with support. Sure, I could find a group to run with on Gyminee, but they don’t “know” me & I don’t know them. I’m sure they’ll be supportive of my efforts, but will they get my sense of humor? What if they all want to talk politics or tech while running? Whereas say I organize a Twitter/FriendFeed meetup, we all know each other from there and the activity will be more focused on fun versus getting mileage in.

Tell me. Am I off-base here or is anyone else interesting in doing something like this? Even if it’s a simple as a hike through Griffith Park ending in a picnic (more food!), that’s still more active than a group of us sitting around chatting…you know, like we do on our computers anyway.

That’s right, I won the Easy Green Living book by Renée Loux that was being given away on Seesmic. Want to watch the whole thing? Below is the video of the when Ms. Loux took our questions on what we viewed as important in living “green”:

Yes, that’s not Renée, but if you click on it, you’ll see here (yes, I’m laughing at a pretty frantic email I received).

About a week and some days later, the winner was announced:

I laughed. I cried. I want to thank the Academy…

Then today…the book arrived:

I’m kinda busy with work, but I’ve had a chance to flip through the book and it’s pretty interesting. There are a lot of items in the book that I already own/buy not because of any greenness on my part, but because of price, locality and prettiness/smells. The book is more a shopping guide than a lifestyle guide, IMO, but even flipping through it, it was struck by how many items in the book are things you don’t really need in life. Or the lack of actual greenness of them, i.e. paper towels/napkins. It’s much more green to use cloth towels, and thankfully, the author does point that out. Which brings me to the second cool thing about the book.

Everything is pretty accessible to anyone who can read and shows that you don’t have to drop big $$$ to be green which is stunning to me considering Loux hosts a show on Fine Living. The best part is that Loux does explain why certain things are better than others. Unlike other “green” books, there doesn’t seem to be those not-so-unsubtle judgment calls on your purchases. Take the section on cookware. It’s extremely detailed explaining why Teflon or non-stick cookware isn’t in your best interest vs. stainless steel or cast iron cookware.

Check out the book at your local library or you can find at Powell’s.

I invited a million people to plurk, but these people are barely catching on to flip phones, so here I am writing on my blog about this.  You’ve got to try the site.  You can visit me at my plurk page and we’ll be friends…well, more friender than usual, I supposed.

You’re probably wondering what happened to me.  Well, I had to take a break…I’m bored with the campaign, annoyed with bloggers and I found a new distraction.  Y’all know I’m not big on social networking.  I can barely keep up with my meatfriends, so the idea of digitalfriends is daunting.

Then along came seesmic.

Now, I’m vlogging…sort of.  It’s a pretty neat forum and I’ve met some supercool people from around the world.  It’s such a breath of fresh air from the liberal blogosphere and afrosphere that I kind of got hooked.  To make matters worse, most of the people on seesmic are very active in the techworld, so I’m learnning a lot f new stuff and hear about a lot of new stuff.

So, now I’ve got a twitter account and signed up this morning for plurk.  You can add me on either of them and of course, you can also find me in the communities listed over there ——>.

See ya ’round the interwebs!