Having two cups of low calorie soup for lunch and toast is really filling. It's actually a lot of food for me, but I force myself to eat it all because it keeps from feeling hungry all afternoon.

I think what I love best about eating is eating something that tastes good and feeling full from it. That's got to be the best feeling in the world. It's also the reason why cutting back on calories really sucks the big one, because it's hard to get that feeling consistently every day.

Eating soup is the only thing that does it for me. It's what worked for me in the past, so I'm sticking with it.

That's my new thing these days, making lists of what's worked for me for how to do things and what's not worked. If I stick with what works then I get stuff done, I lose weight, I keep to my spending plan.

Now granted the lists have to revised every week, because of what's happening in my life, but as I long as I more or less stick to my list, I'm productive.

It's a sign of aging isn't it? When you have to constantly write everything down to get anything done. You know, no more "I'll remember it all and get it done". If I don't write it down, it doesn't get done. It's a necessary evil in my life right now, but it works.

I wonder if there's a correlation between my spending and my eating. When I overspend, I overeat. When I stay on budget, I maintain my weight. What's up with that?

I'm still recovering from my move, which cost me about $3,000, and my trip home for the funeral, which cost me about $1,500.

Then there's my weight, because I've gained back about 10-15 pounds since may, and I'm at 160 pounds instead of hovering at around 145. I hate this!

I'm back to my soup for lunch and seriously tracking what I put into my mouth, and meticulously writing down what I spend and keeping to my spending plan.

I've calculated that by October, I'll be financially and weight wise to where I was in May before my life went to hell in a hand basket. And if I keep on going with my food counting, I'll be at my goal weight of 135 right before Thanksgiving.

Just for fun, I added a link (on the left) for my Amazon.com wish list. I saw it at the "Hurtline Towards Obscurity" website and wanted to do the same.

On a lighter note, I bought a ticket to fly down to LA for the day to see three art exhibits at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

1. Old Masters, Impressionists, and Moderns: French Masterworks from the Pushkin Museum, Moscow

2. Modigliani & the Artists of Montparnasse

3. Classic to Modern: French Works on Paper, 1800–1950, from the Permanent Collection

I fly down in the morning, and come back in the evening. I'll be on information overload from seeing three art exhibits back to back like that, but I don't want to make more than one trip to LA and I didn't want to stay overnight. I'm sure I'll be exhausted!