Then a wee bit of treadmill walking before I came home to breakfast!

Lisa had asked me about the bench press and having wobbling happen when using the bar.  Here is a video of me doing the bench press:

I love the bench press with the bar because it is very stable once you get use to it.  When you first switch from using a machine to either dumbbells or the barbell, you will probably have to drop down the weight.  The machine will always do some of the work for you and actually will compensate for your weaker non-dominant side.  When you go to free weights, there will be an adjustment period as the weaker side catches up. This is more noticeable with the barbell than the dumbbells as the arms work in tandem. An empty bar is 45#, so work up to that with dumbbells first – or if your gym has lighter bars, then go for it (although they are usually short bars so you won’t have a rack). When you push, concentrate on keeping the bar even and go slow, which will make your non-dominant side work.

Lunch time included veggie time.

I made an omelet with some ham and laughing cow.  Broccoli on the side because with dinner out, veggies likely not to happen.

After lattes today, we headed out for a blood donation.  They were giving away free tickets to Fright Fest at Great Escape for donors.

Normally I don’t like to talk too much about problems that I have donating because I don’t want to scare anyone out of doing them, but I am finished donating blood.

I had a supervisor do the stick as per usual, but it ended up being a dry stick and pain shot all the way down my arm to my hand. It was a searing pain. She must have hit a nerve. Then she was trying to move the needle and I just told her to take it out.  I couldn’t even get the actual donation done, and then I started crying because it hurt- which I absolutely hate to do in front of strangers (or really to do at all).  I then got an ice pack and settled down (my hands were shaking terribly). I  went to the snack table to wait for John, where I just had water because there were no raisins today.

I have to say that I was fairly traumatized by today.  So, that was it for me.  I have never stopped a donation before, but it just isn’t worth it.  Even for free tickets (which I did still get, BTW).   I don’t have to try to save the whole world.

Anyway, after John finished donating, it was time for my football dinner since I won the picks!  That perked me up so I wasn’t feeling so sorry for myself.  We went to Rock Hill Bakehouse.  They bake all of their own bread and use local meats and other products here.  There aren’t even big corporate drinks there. No Coke or Pepsi products.

I had a grown-up grilled cheese, which is sharp cheddar and smoked mozzarella and pesto on grilled semolina bread.

Served with cracked pepper potato chips.  Man is this sandwich good!  John and I then split a maple walnut biscotti for dessert.  I forgot to take a picture of that.  They are huge biscotti, so you really need to split them LOL.

As you can see, not steering clear of gluten as much this week so far.

Pink item of the day?  My sunglasses!

Tonight is Project Runway. We are off to watch that with my mom. We’ll have to kick dad out since he doesn’t like it  Party time!

Question:  What is your TV weakness?

Pixie was waiting for me in the window when I got back.  She is most awake in the mornings because that is when she gets her crack wet food.

Made up some protein waffles for breakfast. Cammy was talking about cottage cheese yesterday, which got me thinking about them.  Highly suggestible I am.

Good stuff.  I have to make sure to weigh out my coconut butter because I tend to want to put a lot on top.

I ate breakfast, started working and set John off on the road with some of the coconut flour cookies.    It’s only for a couple days, though.

After a while of work, instead of my usual walk around the block, I hopped on the bike again and did another 6.5 miles.  It felt great!  It was windy for half the ride, which is always a good workout, although when I am by myself there is no one to whine to about the head wind    13.5 miles today. Miles add up quick. I know it seems like a lot, but that is really only an hour of exercise.

I had to make a quick lunch.  I haven’t had a chance to make bread, so it was a sandwich thin to the rescue.

BBQ chicken sandwich with a red plum.  I love the red plums, but I have to cut them up to eat them or I will get a juice stain on me.  They are very juicy.

My barista is gone today, so I had to make myself a latte, which I paired with a coconut flour cookie.

See John?  I made it all by myself!

At least the business wasn’t really busy today, so I could keep up with both that and my work.

My mother is actually a bachelorette this week as well since my dad is camping, so we decided to paint the town red!

My mom has not been to Wholy Crepe, so that was the destination.  I had a pulled pork crepe with coleslaw tucked inside.

We saved room to split dessert.  I talked mom into the lemon blueberry crepe.

So good!

And to make the night even more entertaining, it was a quick stop at the library.  We sure know how to live it up

My books always reflect the multitude of things going on in my head at any given time.  I got a cookbook, this training book, and an eating plan book.  Guess I am thinking about food…

I still have to finish up work tonight, so my bachelorette time is over for now, but there is always tomorrow!

Question:  Do you like plums?

Had such a lovely relaxing breakfast at Panera Bread today.

Then we picked up a couple things at Home Depot and looked at the funner parts of our remodel, like the toilet and sink and flooring. Then we started thinking about our upstairs bath as well.  I told John that we should probably finish the downstairs one first

We spent the majority of Saturday working on the half bath.  Now that inspections are done and passed, we could glue everything together and make all the wiring hot, which took most of the day.  The worse jobs are over now!

Tested our plumbing    All lines are okay except the connections for the washer.  We are going to have to solder those in place.   We truly are learning a lot on this project and realize how much more we actually can do ourselves and do it right.  I am glad to be finished with being under the floor, though, which actually is done barring a disaster.  Now are getting into the fun stuff!

I had a few snacks today – these came into the house

Pretzel M&Ms. D’oh!  They are up high, that’s for sure.

We wanted to go out to dinner to celebrate my raise and being able to work from home and passing the plumbing/electrical inspections, so we headed up to Lake George.  We were looking a different restaurant that we hadn’t tried before, but couldn’t find it.  A lot of things are still closed because it is not the season yet.  Lake George is pretty cold right now.

Still  frozen except right near shore!

This is a place we like to sit when we get here from biking in the summer.

Since we couldn’t find what we were looking for, we chose Ali Baba instead:

I like the inside of this place.  It’s a small restaurant, but nicely decorated.

They have a big oven that they cook the food in, which has beautiful tile.  I wish this picture had come out better.  I was trying to not get the other patrons in the shot.

John and I split 2 different entrees.  He had a falafel pita:

It had a cucumber yogurt sauce and a spicy reddish sauce on it.  It was a little too hot for John, but I quite liked it.  The pita was delicious as well.  I think it had to be fresh made judging by the texture and flavor.

I had a cheese pide (pronounced pita – why they didn’t spell it that way is beyond me).  This had egg, mozzarella, feta cheese and a bit of spinach. Or I think it was spinach.

Plus a ton of garlic.  Holy clove batman!  It was pungent but absolutely delicious!  The crust was crispy on the bottom and chewy on the inside.  Very flavorful!

The service wasn’t the best.  Friendly, but not much in the way of checkbacks.  I keep thinking about how good these dishes were.  I think I liked the pide better, but I would get either again for sure!

All in all a nice weekend and I actually am looking forward to working tomorrow (for real!).

Question: Do you like Mediterranean food?

Whew! I decided to really work today and to do super and giant sets with these (pairing 2 or 3 exercises together). I got this workout done in 31 minutes! I was sweating at the end.

I love this little guy.  He just cracks me up.

BTW – I lifted today because I am doing my Healthy Heart Weekend run tomorrow!  I’ll shoot an email out to everyone just to remind as I am sure there are those that don’t read my blog very often (gasp).

I was ready for breakfast.  Hope you aren’t tired of the 1-minute muffin thing going on here.

I made up the non-sweet one and chopped it up into a bowl of blueberry sauce.  Then I put on a tablespoon of coconut butter

I was totally in love!  Who says you need grains for breakfast?  Okay, I say that because I do love my oats, but this was really good.  I actually was standing up eating this in the kitchen because it tasted so good to me before I made myself sit LOL!  Yeah, I like food.

Lower (for me) carb/no grains day, so lunch was something that I cannot remember having in forever.  I have to admit that this scared me a little bit.  Eating a lot more fat is taking me out of my comfort zone, but I like it.

I cooked up a sausage patty from the smokehouse.  Turns out it was a lean patty – as there was no oil left in the pan after I cooked it!  I had to add some for the eggs.

No latte picture today.  John was out this afternoon and brought a couple lattes home in travel mugs for us, so nothing really special to look at.  I have switched to 2% milk for my lattes and it is yummy!

I am actually eating a few less calories on the lower carb/higher fat days just because I am not hungry, so that can be a good thing, but I have to be careful to make sure I eat enough (how weird is that to read on this blog??).

John won the last of the football picks, as I said yesterday, and he called for Denny’s tonight.  I don’t know why he chose Denny’s for the last meal of the football season, but there you go.  I am just still very happy with how accommodating they are with special requests.  I would not have had eggs with lunch had I known that we were going to Denny’s for dinner.  When you try to avoid corporate meat and don’t eat fish and are avoiding grains- that doesn’t always leave a lot left over to eat on a menu other than eggs.  I cobbled together a tasty meal, though.  I had a side of fruit:

A side of sauteed spinach:

This was really good.  I can’t believe I am saying that about spinach, but it was!  I was half expecting some kind of frozen spinach disaster, but it was baby spinach leaves freshly sauteed. At Denny’s.  Who knew?

I decided to have an egg white omelet with cheddar in it for the entree.  At first it came out as regular eggs, so I sent that back and had it done right.

It was so hot, too, when the correct one came out lickety split!  I really do give them kudos for good service.  Never be afraid to ask for what you want.  You will be so much happier.

Question:  Have you ever gone to a place with low expectations and gotten great food/service?

Gym still not crowded this morning.  There were a few people there, but they were regulars.  I was wondering if it was people moving to a different gym.  A Planet Fitness opened up in our mall and it is only $10 a month, so maybe people from my gym (whose memberships expire in January) moved there.

I hopped on the treadmill and ran for 5 miles at an 11:00 pace with a bit of speed work in the middle.  I thought about taking a walking break in the middle when I changed soundtracks on my mp3, but I just kept going through the whole thing.  Sometimes it can be precarious doing that while running, at least for me.

One thing about running longer is watching people come and go – and somebody *always* has to make a comment about how long I am on the mill.  You know, I never comment on other peoples’ workouts, and yet everybody feels the need to comment on mine?

I was quite hangry when I got home.  I made up a bowl of banana custard cream of wheat topped with PB and jam.

Good thing is was really hot or I would have just poured it down my throat in one shot!

Lots of work today.  Things are all back to what passes for normal around here.

Since I cannot satisfy my blueberry fix anymore, I can at least get another berry fix for lunch!  I pulled out an old standby of greek yogurt, cereal, and strawberries.

Cereal is in the house and I am doing okay with it.  It’s not even up high.

As I am sitting here typing this, I am noticing that my chest muscles are sore today.  That almost never happens.  Must be from doing different exercises now that my shoulders are better.  Normally 15# DB flyes don’t cause soreness, but with a several-month layoff, guess that is another story.  It’s a good sore, though.

Afternoon snackage:

and some of these because I was hungry:

John won the last week of football picks.  Boooo!  I ended up 1 game up for the whole season, though (go me!).  Of course, this week’s defeat, which was a flaming defeat by 5 games, meant dinner out tonight.  John chose 99.

John in celebratory Heissman pose:

Not amused:

99 serves popcorn to munch on, which is kind of fun and different.

I created a meal of things I wanted off the menu from the side items and asked that they be brought as a single meal.

I chose a side salad:

With some broccoli

and some of the jammin’ crab chowder:

Nice to get everything I wanted and nothing I didn’t!  The soup was very good, too.

I was not too full after dinner.  We walked around a bit and headed across the street for an apertif!

I have a decaf americano.  That is a good way to order decaf as it is made fresh.

It’s so nice to have an evening where I don’t have to work!

I got more good sleep last night to the tune of 7.5 hours.  Yay!  I had breakfast first because I wanted to run a bit later outside.  I made up some pumpkin custard oats topped with pecans, honey fluff, and crystallized ginger.

That’s what I’m talking about!  Yum!  I love how the fluff gets all melty.

I worked and let brekkie settle, then set out for an outdoor run.  It was 39 degrees and not windy, so all in all a good run scenario.  I did 3 miles at a nice steady pace.  It was feeling good and easy.  The last 2 or 3 runs I have had have felt very different from all of the ones since I herniated my disk, which has been about 8 months now.   I feel like I have turned a corner and am getting my running mojo back.  I have accepted the fact that I likely have permanent numbness in my knee and that my thigh may feel tight forever, but I am getting pretty used to that.  It was the running ease – relatively speaking- that was missing, and I have felt that the last couple of runs.

I am feeling good enough about it that I am seriously thinking about a half marathon next year.  Maybe.

Lunch time!  I just flopped an egg scramble on a pita with laughing cow and hot sauce.

There was no room for the pear on my plate, so it was on the side.

This was a dry pear… booooo….

Goal check! These were the goals set out for November:

• Lose weight this month.  I am not putting a number on how much to lose, just some.  I lost 1 pound this month, too bad I gained 4 in October LOL! I actually had lost more, but this was the post Tday weigh in.
• Do a turkey trot on Thanksgiving.  I took part in a virtual turkey trot hosted by Alissa and did 5 miles!
• Organize my bedroom closet (scary!).  I have pictures of this.  I did pretty well on neatening it up, but need to purge more and keep it that way (the hard part).
• No eggnog until Thanksgiving (latte or otherwise).  I  made it to Tday without the nog!

Looking at that, I feel pretty good overall.  I will post some December goals tomorrow.

Afternoon snack time!  Homemade eggnog latte.  If you missed the earlier post, here is John’s lightened up eggnog recipe!

The banana is pictured here for blog space sake, but I didn’t eat it until about an hour after the latte.

John won football picks *again*.   I am going to have to get a 3rd job to pay for all these dinners  unless I start winning some weeks around here!  Stupid Colts.  For those that wonder, John and I do have our own separate checking accounts, although the business account pays for most of our living expenses.   It just makes life easier that way.  Maybe that is why we are still married after 14 years?

So his choice was Pizzeria Uno.  I perused the nutritional info and noticed a most annoying thing.  They gave the calories for a serving size, and then noted that 2 servings came with each meal.  WTF?  Serve me one portion or give me the tally for the whole plate thankyouverymuch.

Anyhoo, I just went for a basic tonight.  House salad with grilled chicken and blueberry pomegranate dressing- which was 2 servings.  Shall I count lettuce leaves to get my single serving? Actually, I ate both portions since it was about 400 calories with the dressing, of which I used one.

Rainy evening in tonight. Here we thought the tree was safe from Pixie.  Doesn’t she look all “who me?” in this photo:

Now she says, “How did that ornament get on the floor?”

She likes shiny sparkly things like her owner does…

Tonight’s evening snack/dessert.  Attunes!  I haven’t gotten these in a while.

Have a great night!

Calorie Breakdown:  Breakfast: 489, Lunch: 330, Snack (latte and nana): 221, dinner: 410, evening snack: 90.  Total: 1540

These are sprinkled with a bit of toasted, unsweetened coconut.

Pink item of the day used in the making of breakfast:

Yes – that is a couple days past the sell by date.  If I don’t post tomorrow, you will know why.   Work is busy for both jobs, so I just logged in early and started working.  I like it much better when it is this way than waiting around for work to show up.

In thinking about events to do, with the winter the way it is here, there are no events until spring pretty much after the last few 5Ks coming up – the coldest of them being in early December (reindeer run) when I think it was 15 degrees last year?    Yeah – that is cold.  That makes it hard to set a goal for any type of training because events are  so far into the future.  I might just try working on getting more of my strength back.  I was looking at old logs and I was doing deadlifts and squats over 100 pounds at the beginning of the year, which I still have not worked back up to yet after my herniated disk.  So that is something to shoot for at any rate.

I am running the goblin gallop at the end of the month or at the very least on my own as part of Fran’s virtual run (click here if you want to virtual run).

Lunch time!  Just some quick eats.

These pretzel crackers from Ritz are really good!

I was able to finish up work earlier in the day since I started early.  That is always nice.  John made up lattes as I wrapped up.  To add the protein, we just put in about 1/4 scoop of whey into the milk when steaming.  It works really well and adds about 7 grams of protein to the cup.

Pixie looks pissed off for some reason.  Probably because I was bothering her while she was soaking up the warmth on the warm dishwasher! (We have a portable).

You may not have noticed, but I am doing a no-added sugar day today.  I am going to rock the Hot 100 this week.

I went out for a nice 3-mile walk before dinner.  I decided I didn’t feel like running, so I didn’t!  Speaking of dinner, John chose to have his football meal tonight (thank you Packers and Ravens   ).  A new place opened up here last month:

One thing I liked about this place is that they had junior burritos.  I like burritos, but they are always so big and never do well to take half home.  Here is my junior Homewrecker:

On a whole grain wrap with chicken, rice, pico de gallo, lettuce, sour cream and cheese and it was about 450 calories.  Quite good for all that goodness in there:

Here is a shot for showing the size:

It was just the right amount.  It did come with a side of tortilla chips, and I just ate 4 or 5 of those.  While the small burrito size is nice, I have to say that everything was a bit bland.  I prefer Chipotle.

Relaxing night on tap tonight.  I am going to have some pineapple and do some TV watching and reading.

Question:  Have you been to a Moe’s?