Metabolic rates

Image was borrowed. 

Your "metabolism" (the rate at which you burn calories) has three components:

• Basal metabolic rate (BMR) - energy you need to live. Breathing, pumping blood, maintaining body temperature. It uses up about 50-60% of calories.
• Thermic effect of food (TEF) - energy you use around food. Eating, digesting, and storing. 10-15%
• Activity-related energy expenditure. All the getting around and exercising. Rest of the stuff. 

If you want to lose weight, easiest to fiddle with the third one. Mighty hard to maintain weight loss by fudging the first two, which are determined by various factors, such as genes, gender, body composition, activities, and so on. As you lose weight, your BMR goes down as well. As you eat less, so does the TEF. So it gets harder and harder to lose weight.

Fidgeters have higher BMR, so they tend to be leaner. But fidgeting is genetically determined, so if you weren't born one, it's hard to pick up the "habit" (it's really unconscious movement, so it's not like the fidgeter can choose to start fidgeting).

Converting IRA to Roth in 2010

Fidelity wrote a great article on the subject.

How many calories are you burning?

Want to know how many calories you are burning for your sports or activities? You can check out a calorie counter.

It's not completely accurate, because it doesn't account for various things like your body composition (how much of you is made up of muscle and bones and how much of you is made up of stuff that jiggles), base metabolism, athletic conditioning, gender, intensity, and all that, but it's a good start. Figure that the actual number of calories you burn probably depends on the intensity.

For example, the calculator says that a person on average would burn about 420 calories for an hour of competitive badminton (kudos to the calculator for differentiating between silly leisure badminton and competitive badminton). But I've seen data where one can burn 500 to 800 (for singles games) calories an hour.

So how do you figure out intensity without a fancypants heart rate monitor (like Polar)? You can use perceived exertion. Try chatting during exercise. If you can still chat, that's low exertion; chat with gasping, medium; cannot say a word, high; blacking out, that's way too much.

The website has a bunch of other calculators, so don't forget to scroll down and check them out.

Detecting bedbugs

How do you know if you have a bed bug infestation?

• You wake up with itchy welts that appear in a cluster or row of threes. That's their calling card. But don't freak out, yet it could be another insect. Also 1 in 3 folks are lucky enough to not have reactions to bed bug bites
• You see tiny black spots or rust staines on mattress seams, headboards, baseboards, or corners where walls meet. It looks kinda like moldy.
• They smell like rotting coconuts. 

The key to getting rid of bed bugs is detecting an infestation early and treating it before it spreads.

Spectacular autumnal road trip on Utah's Highway 12

Utah's Highway 12 is also known as Journey Through Time Scenic Byway. This 125-mile curvaceous two-lane road is jam-packed with four state parks, two national parks, a national forest, and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. It is particularly spectacular during the fall.

Start from outside Panguitch (about 250 miles south of Salt Lake City), to red canyons, hoodoos, Bryce Canyon National Park (with Fairyland Point, just outside the gate, as a highlight). Next, move on to Kodachrome Basin State Park with its gravity-defying sandstone chimneys, and then to Escalante Petrified Forest State Park with multi-colored petrified trees.

At milepost 75, you climb up Hogsback with views of the rounded dome of Navajo Mountain. After passing by Boulder Mountain, you end in Torrey, where you can hustle over to the Capitol Reef National Park.

And don't miss out on Hell's Backbone Grill, which is a gourmet destination.

For more information, see http://www.utah.com/byways/highway_12.htm and AAA Via magazine.

Picture from: http://utahpictures.com/Highway_12_Dec.php

Researching your hotel

If you travel a lot, booking hotels is one of the most time consuming part of your research. Besides the price, you have to worry about the cleanliness, location, parking, facilities, bathroom quality, and other such things.

Of course, the pictures look great and the description makes the place sound like a resort spa, but you kinda suspect that the PR people were feeling creative. They never tell you things like how the available parking will cost you $25 a night and that they have only 12 spots. The hotel knows that once you show up, you are not likely to ditch them for another hotel, especially if they already have your credit card information. 

I once booked a hotel that described itself as "hip" and "urban," but it turned out to be an euphemism for "Motel 6-esque with a bit more style." There were no bedbugs, though, so I can't really complain. 

So if you really want a better idea of what you are booking, go to http://www.oyster.com/ first. They send investigators to write honest reports and take lots of pictures. And I mean lots of pictures (see the Photos tab). You'll have a good idea of what you are booking. Finally, a WYSIWYG travel site. 

Garden chores for autumn

Here's the task list for fall.

• Plant spring bulbs, shrubs, and trees.
• Plant salad crops 4-6 weeks before the first frost.
• Rail against the end of summer!