Category Archives: goals

Bring on 2014!

Geez – we are in the middle of quite the snow storm. I think it is worse in some places, too – which is crazy!  Not to mention really cold.  It was 0 degrees in the mid afternoon at the warmest part of the day. Nothing like starting the year off with a weather bang.

So, I was reflecting on the year to come and there is a lot of uncertainty in it with the move and all that, but here are some things that I would like to accomplish or work towards this year.  Some things will be dependent on the new house. We are all ready to go; we are just waiting for the selling bank to pull title. So, who knows how long that will take. Hopefully before the scheduled close of the 24th.

1.  Build something. We had good success with the table, which I am loving, so I want to do something else. Of course, I want to make it my project that I do from start to finish, including all wood cuts and assembly. There are some great sites out there like Ana White and Design Confidential for plans. This I really look forward to doing.

2. Hiking.  We do so much biking because we love it, but our area also had a ton of hiking trails. I keep saying we should do some of them and we are going to do that this year. Since I didn’t set any bike goals for the year, this will be good.

3. Focus on healthy eating.  I pretty much have maintained the same weight for the last few years and I think that shows that my weight is dependent upon my activity level and currently how I eat.  I think if I focus a little more on healthy eating that maybe my weight will correlate with that. That’s the plan, anyway. So, making sure I have balanced meals and moderate my treats and keep a lid on the snack monster, I should be okay.

4. Heavy lifting.  I have missed my heavy lifting since I am not at the gym anymore.  I would like to get back to that. Conveniently enough, my old gym is only a couple miles from our new house and once things settle down after this spring, I will probably rejoin (it’s only $100 for a yearly membership).

5. Be a better person.  Don’t we all strive for this? I feel like lately I have been a bit of a snark master – a lot of which was due to stress and sometimes just the stupidity I see on the news! Anyway, I want to try to be a bit better about that, less judging of myself and others, etc.

6. A possible flip.  I almost didn’t put this down, but I was seriously thinking about it near the end of 2012 and if we hadn’t found Radiance Manor, I probably would have been in the midst of buying a flip candidate.  John said I should go for it and that is really all the encouragement I need. Of course, this won’t happen until late 2014 if at all because we have to get settled in the new house and sell our current one before any of that can happen.  Then there has to be the right deal. So, this is not a goal that I will force to happen.

That will give me some sort of focus. In the meantime, our life is going to be crazy, crazy for the next few months. John is going to Vegas next week. There is the house closing, remodeling the kitchen before we move in. Then we have a vacation planned in February. Then we will move into the new house after that.  See what I mean when I said this probably wasn’t the best time to buy a house? :mrgreen:  I can already feel some stress levels rising, not bad stress, but stress all the same.

Here’s to 2014!!

 

Hello 2013!!

Welcome to a fresh new year 😀

We had a quiet New Year’s Eve.  The family had gotten together on Sunday for a games and snacks and a New Year’s toast, so John and I spent a quiet night at home.

I did, however, get a chance to meet up with Dawn earlier in the day!  Yay!  She was staying not too far from Saratoga this weekend.  I had finally met Dawn a couple years ago in person when we were both part the Dr. Oz 100th episode show.  My mother and I went down to Saratoga to have coffee (what else?) with Dawn.

latte

It was great seeing her again.

me and dawn

That was catching up with 3 bloggie friends in real life in 2012!

The only yearly goal I had set for myself for 2012 was weight loss and I stayed exactly the same for the year.  What are the chances of that??  Apparently not zero  :mrgreen: Sometimes I eschew the yearly goals, but then I figure I do them monthly for myself anyway, so why not some longer term things to do.  So, here are the things I would like to accomplish this year.

todolist   1.  Take a few guitar lessons.  I am at that point where I could use some guidance.  I just need to find a teacher that I can afford and who plays classical style.  Or I might get some online lessons.

2. Bathroom update.  I need to really figure out a budget for this project to see how much it will cost to do various things.  The only thing we will have done by someone else is the refinishing of the tub and the tile around it (not ripping that out).  The cost of that will determine when and what we do to the rest of the room.

3. Yep – lose weight again.  Maybe making a goal to lose weight is how I will maintain 😀  I would like to drop a pants size and get back into my old pants again that I haven’t worn in a couple years.  No weight goal, just size goal. Back to the grind again.

4. Either do another 100 mile bike ride or some organized bike events. I need something to work towards if I don’t do duathlons.

5.  Try to hit 2500 miles on the bike this year.  I am not considering this a possible goal until we get an idea of the spring time weather. Last year we were riding in early March and that allowed me to get over 2100 miles, so I won’t know how possible this is until the spring comes.

6.  Relax more.  I work really hard and forget to take time for me.  I don’t need to stress so much about working extra if I have the time.  I can take that time to do relaxing things.  Like maybe try my hand at drawing?

So that’s the plan!

November Goals

Welcome to November – and Happy Day of the Dead! Or Days of the Dead as John pointed out, since technically it is 2 days.  Of course, every day is day of the dead until coffee time!


Don’t you love this coffee break? I asked for permission to use this photo – if you want to see Collin’s other work, here is his website.

We are now a candy corn free household (until the sales, that is), but I did have breakfast in my candy corn bowl!

Cold and icky today.  I did a 3 mile walk today in rainy and blustery 45 degree conditions and I got a deep chill.  Pixie was wanting a lot of warmth, too.

I think she really knows how very lucky she is to have come up to our door.

Anyhoo, new month means new goals!  These are my plans for this month:

1. Do several days a week of lower-carb/grain-free. To help prevent holiday pants busting, I have found this really works well while still letting me enjoy the yummy foods this time of year, like pumpkin pie bagels and eggnog lattes!  Now for me, lower carb means 100 total grams of carbs a day.  I don’t bother with net carbs.  So if it is not net carbs, is it gross carbs? LOL.  Going grain free makes it easier to cut those down as well. So, 3 or 4 days a week will be my goal.

2. Organize the bedroom.  Having decluttered the downstairs, now the upstairs is a mess, particularly the bedroom.  I tend to dump my clothes (clean) on the floor by my bed.  I need to organize the closet and get more storage.  That means thrifting for a couple dressers.  Wooden only – no MDF!

3. Run a 5K on Thanksgiving.  Not an official 5K or anything, but just going out and doing one on my own, running the entire thing.  I am up to 2.3 miles now, so this should be doable.  Of course, if the weather is really nice – I may bike on turkey day (highly unlikely, but I have my hopes).

4. Get out and do more.  We have been homebodies too much lately. Goal this month is to do some things other than go out for coffee at night.

5.  Going with the no-grain days in goal 1, I will also make some new grain-free recipes and post them.  They won’t all be desserts, either  😀

Sound good?

We decided to work on the goal of getting out more and went out to dinner tonight.  Seeing as I won the football picks for the third week in a row – because I rock – I got the dinner choice!  We went back to Siam Thai Sushi, where we went on John’s birthday.  Being the nice wife that I am, I had a BOGO coupon to use for a free entree.  Wasn’t that nice of me to do since he had to pay?  Anyway, check out the world’s largest spoon.

Seriously, this thing is like a ladle.  I actually used the spoon served with my tea to eat with since I didn’t feel like using a shovel to eat.

My dinner – Massaman Curry with shrimp.

I guess the picture probably doesn’t look as good as this tasted! It was wonderful!  It has potatoes, peppers, carrots and peanuts in a coconut based spicy sauce.  I added the shrimp for protein.   This must be recreated at home and soon!

Bonus is that I brought home half to have for lunch tomorrow as well.

More guitar practicing for me today 😀

 

I don’t quite look like this, but close  :mrgreen:  Just add skin and remove the mustache.

The New Year and January mission

A bright and hopefully shiny 2012 is here.  The new year didn’t start off bright and shiny, though.

That was bizarre to see.  Fog in January and no snow.  You would think we were in the PNW.

I ended up pretty much not working on Monday. There was about 20 minutes of work and that was it.  Bonus day off!

I did that before breakfast, which was pumpkin oats:

Tasty and a good way to start out the day eating wise.  That’s creamed honey on top.

I was thinking about doing yearly goals and just couldn’t really come up with anything concrete other than things I want/need to get done (new flooring downstairs, resurfacing the driveway, health insurance, possibly a new car).  Instead, I will just focus on the monthly goals that I have been doing.

For January, I do need to concentrate on weight loss again.  That is my only goal. It is really hard to not say “getitoff-getitoff-getitoff” Now, now, now!!! I could do all kinds of crazy things to make it come off fast, but then I take a deep breath and think of the things I did to lose weight that weren’t crazy.

Simple stuff:

– Knock off the extra snacking and eat within my calorie range.

– Stick to a 90/10 eating style.  Taking into account 3 meals and 2 snacks a day, that makes 35 meals a week.  3.5 of them can be more indulgent in a week.  How does one make a half meal, anyway?

– Do my exercise routine as usual.  No need to go extreme crazy and burn out.

– Get enough protein and fat with my meals.  That keeps me fuller longer.

If I follow the steps that lead to a healthy weight, then the weight loss should follow, right?  We will see what happens before we leave for Disney at the end of the month.

Lunch time brought a new soup.  Yeah, I can make my own soup, but sometimes it is just easier to buy – you know?

This is really, really bland.  It needs a lot of dressing up, but it is filling.  Today, I mixed in a serving of ricotta cheese to bump up the protein.

John and I then went out shopping.  He had a gift card and I was just bargain hunting.  Score!  At Dress Barn, I found a pair of boot cut jeans and a pair of denim shorts (for Florida) in petite size on the sale rack. That almost never happens as clothes on sales racks are usually for taller people.  Yay for no rolling up pant legs!

$22 total for both pairs!  Funny thing.  I got 3 pairs of my regular size and 1 pair a size bigger to try on (thinking of weight gain).  Three different brands. The larger size did not fit – too tight.  My regular size fit on the other 3 pairs.  It’s like reverse-a-size or something.  How stupid!  I am so glad I did not try the larger size on first or I would have completely panicked.

We went for coffee afterwards to the new shop that opened up.  Coffee Planet.

Very, very good!  (Mom, we need to do mother/daughter night there).

I kept from extra snacking today.  Some days are just easier than others.  I was pretty hungry for dinner, though.

I decided on a stir fry.  I sauteed up some chicken and broccoli in a little macadamia nut oil, then added some House of Tsang teriyaki sauce and cooked brown rice.  Dinner in 10 minutes.

This was a nice big plate of food.  FYI, calories come in at 442 for this plate.

On a blog note – I found a website that is going to help me organize all my recipes in searchable format.  It’s called Recipage and the code will be embedded on my site in the header here.  Now it is just going to take time to get them all in there, so be patient with that, but it will be much easier to find a recipe I talk about, but might not link to.

I will be working on that tonight since there is no football on.  I don’t know what to do with myself LOL!  I won the picks this week *and* I ended up winning for the year.  I picked 64% of the games correctly this year.  Take that, sports pundits.  They need to hire me.  :mrgreen:

I have my snack ready to go for later.

Plus some cashews for crunch.  Not sure I can go a day without some sort of nut LOL!

December wrap up and yearly goals

Last day of the year and I forgot to do my goal wrap up yesterday. Ooops.   :mrgreen:

I had a few goals for December:

1. No weight gain over the holidays.  Fail.  I did gain weight this month.

2. Do some no added sugar days.  I did a very little sugar days and a couple no sugar days.  Of course – I had some all sugar days (I am looking in your direction Christmas Eve!).

3.  Make a video of me playing guitar to post on the blog.  Done and done! 

4. Relax more.  I really don’t know how well I did here.  I did have a 3 day weekend, so that counts, right?

 

And going back to January, these were on my to-do list  for the year:

– We are going to do another 100 mile bike ride this year.  Done, although it was just me this year.

Just for fun, I should count how many helmeted pictures of me there are on this blog.

– Maybe do a half marathon.  Nope. Not with giving up running.

– I hope to do a different duathlon in May 3– Nope. With no running, hard to do a duathlon

– Definitely a few 5K races.  Nope.

– Keep stretching.  Ooops, was this one of my goals??

–I really would like the scal3 to go down further.  I am not shooting for a specific number, but I do have a pair of pants I would like to have less tight. Complete fail here.

– I hope to do more cooking and food recipes on the blog.  Fairly successful here.  One of my favorite recipes? The grain-free banana breakfast pudding.

– I am going to work on my classical guitar this year. I will commit to putting a video of myself on the blog playing something at the end of the year. Done – see above.

Learn to do more than just basic plumbing so that we can install a water softener ourselves (after I save up for it), and possibly install a half bath in our laundry room.  Done!!  My favorite project of the year.  I am so proud of us doing this all by ourselves – and meeting building codes!

– Tinker with the blog a bit.  Ehhh.

– Earn more money.  Success.  Turns out it was getting laid off that turned out to be the catalyst for this.  I got a raise and full time from the second job.

– Just try to be a better person in general.  Always a work in progress.  I did start the literacy tutoring, so there’s something.

I am not sure if I will be making a to-do list or not for the 2012.  I will do my monthly goals, as I enjoy them and coming up with new things to challenge myself with.  I imagine I will have to get on the weight loss train for reals and not just dink around with it.

We are having a family get together for the holiday.  I wish all of you a very happy and safe New Year’s Eve.

 

See you on the flip side!

June Wrap Up and mid-year check in

Wow – the last day of June.  Sometimes it scares me how fast time goes by.  I had a busy month!  Time to see how I did on my monthly goals.

1. Enjoy turning 43! Done!

2. Go no TV for one week. We did this and it wasn’t bad at all!  TV is actually kind of an afterthought for me.  However, this wasn’t during football season, so that would have been a whole ‘nother story.

3. Operation Sleep.  I bought a sleep mask, did some HTP.  I have magnesium on the way.  Maybe making some progress?  I will have to continue with this one.

4.  I am finally really ready to progress on losing this last bit of weight that I have talked about for the last 2 years.  Sigh… it is slow going.  It is hard getting back into stringing together many losing weight days instead of how you maintain with lower days and higher days.  It is working, though.  It’s just hard to be patient.

5. Sitting less for work.  This was hard to do.  I found it is very uncomfortable to stand and type because I use a foot pedal and it keeps my hips shifted off center.  Not so sure that is good for me.  I like the ball, but I still have to sit very still, so not sure I get much out of it.  I think I am better off sitting on the ball if I am watching TV or on the internet at night when I can roll it around while sitting on it.

Now checking in on the yearly goals just for fun, since we are halfway through the year (again, where does the time go??)  It was good to go back and read my ‘to-do’ list.  I had forgotten about some of them. 😯

Fitness:

–  100 mile bike ride this year.  In progress towards

– Maybe do a half marathon/duathlon in May/Definitely a few 5K races. Nope.  Now that I am not running anymore, those goals are shot.

– Keep stretching. Needed a reminder on this.  I forgot about it!

– Lose some weight. Yeah, whatever, see above. LOL!  It’s very slow.

– More cooking and food recipes on the blog. Not sure how I am doing on this one, but I am posting recipes.

Misc:

–Work on my classical guitar this year.  I am rocking this one!  I’ve been practicing almost every single day and actually am getting better!

– Possibly install a half bath in our laundry room. Done!

– Earn more money.  Well, that happened since I went through the whole losing one job and getting a raise with the other.  That actually worked out really well, as long as nothing changes.

– Just try to be a better person in general. Work in progress

Not bad so far,  now I have a little better focus on things again.

Stay tuned tomorrow for July goals and What’s blooming!

Question:  How was your June?

March goals

Lifting day! After the dreariness of yesterday, today’s bright sunshine was a welcome relief, even though it is still cold. I was up early, though, thanks to Ms. Pixie pushing on the door wanting her crack.  So, I was at the gym earlier than usual.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Stiff-legged deadlift 3 sets of 10 at 75# Lower Body
1-arm Dumbbell Row 3 sets of 8 with 20 DB# Back
Planks 3 sets of 60-second holds Core
Barbell Bench Press 3 sets of 10 at 55# Chest
Calf Raise 3 sets of 10 at 170# Calves
Lower Back Extension 3 sets of 10 at 100# Low Back
Arnold Press 3 sets of 12 with 10# DBs (20# total) Shoulders
Pliet Squat 3 sets of 10 with 35# DB Lower Body

Good stuff. Out of all of those, the plank is the hardest. Least amount of weight and movement, the most sweat and increased heart rate.  Go figure.

I was ready for some peanut flour waffles!  Topped with coconut butter.

I am going to have to break down and order peanut flour online.  Maybe I can find a place that sells that and coconut flour (wanting to try that, too).

I wrapped up February yesterday, so now time for this months ‘to-do’ list!

1.  Start ramping up the bike riding on the trainer in preparation for outdoor rides (with cupcakes!).  This means longer ride times.  I bet we will even get in a long outdoor ride this month! 😀

2.  Keep working with some sugar/grain free days.  Really liking eating the fat.  I am not focusing on any weight loss this month.  I will be increasing carbs to keep up with the increase in biking miles.

3. Start soap production again, I think.  Need to sit down and really decide if I want to do a website and all that again.

4. Keep trying new recipes.  I have been having fun with this.

5.  Work on our new 1/2 bath addition!  We are making progress on this and I am excited to get past the initial construction and get into the nitty gritty.

This month will be fairly busy, so that is about all I am committing to.

Lunch time!  John wanted to go out for dinner tonight, so I wanted to get in my veggies with lunch.

This sauce on the chicken was an 1/8th cup of canned tomato sauce with 1 tsp of heavy cream.  Easy and really good!  You probably will be seeing this again soon. :mrgreen:

Lots of work to do today.  Gotta love this.  One of my files today included this:  “the patient sustained injury to his left middle finger when he placed it into a snowblower.”  Ummmm…. ow, and what were you thinking??? Seriously.

This job is kind of funny because it is sort of like tuning into a movie in the middle and not quite knowing what happened to get you where you are.  I just have to wonder what exactly goes through a person’s mind before they stick their finger into a snowblower.  Probably not much…

Latte break:

Tried to decide where to go for dinner that was inexpensive without being pizza.  So, that meant back to Denny’s LOL!

I had a cheese omelet (whole eggs)

Plus some fruit.

Then we stopped at K-Mart for a real quality evening as we needed coffee filters and motor oil.  I shouldn’t be mean because K-Mart had fresh strawberries for $1 a pound!  We picked up 3.  Might be making some jam this week.  Awesome!

Tonight I have some soap to make for a special order (one reason why I might crank the production back up) and working on the laundry room.  It is going to be a busy week.  Can’t wait for bagels tomorrow!

February Wrap Up and that’s a lot of fat!

Okay – March starts tomorrow and that really means spring is coming!  You wouldn’t think so with the amount of snow we had since Friday.  Here I am standing by a snow bank on the side of the house:

That would be about 4 feet high.  Our bobsled chute:

It is very hard to see to get out of the driveway.

We have a big overhang of snow on our garage, which will fall off sometime today.  It just froze this way.

Yes, I am still married to him…

Today is a rainy sleet mess, but at least we don’t have to shovel it!

I chose not to go to the gym today to run on the treadmill.  I thought about it while drinking up some protein.

Just not feeling the run,though; part of which is some nagging knee pain that I think might be related to my old back injury.  So, I stayed home and rode on the trainer for 10 miles.  Good enough!

Time for breakfast!  I made up a bunch of the magic rolls yesterday so we can eat them this week.  John really likes them.  I had an egg sammie with laughing cow.  Skipped the hot sauce in the a.m., though.

Since it is the last day of February, time to do a review. Here is the assessment of my goals for this month:

1. Continue with weight loss efforts.  Did really well here.  I lost 3 pounds, which is the last of the Christmas weight.  Woo Hoo! Like I said, 1 week to put on, 2 months to take off.

2.  Experiment with some eating protocols. Just for fun.  I might try doing a couple low carb days just to see what they are like.  Or more likely paleo/primal type eating.  I incorporated some lower carb days each week.  Really more of a sugar and grain free approach with higher fat.  This was a surprising hit for me.  I will discuss more below.

3. Be more productive with my down time.  Down time is great, but I don’t need to spend it all on the computer or playing games.  That means reading more books, going out for events, etc.  Success here.  John and I went to a couple of concerts and I read voraciously this month.  Not to mention the new half bath we are putting in.

4. Do more recipe cooking and not just meal assembly.  Another success!  Some of the cooking involved Chicken chili, Chicken with balsamic tomatoes, Magic Rolls, Coconut Curry Chicken.

5.  Clean the house for 15 minutes each day a la Fly Lady.  I was doing really well with this, then about mid month I started slacking off, especially when we started working on the renovation.  Oops.

A good month overall.  Tomorrow reboots with some new monthly objectives.

I was ready for a circular lunch today.  I needed fiber, so I did a 1-minute muffin (pumpkin) topped with some coconut butter.

Tasty.  I am wanting to do a cream cheese frosting on this thing again.  That always goes well with pumpkin.

So let’s talk some numbers and some fat.  Regarding doing the lower carb stuff during last month, this took me quite a bit out of my comfort zone.  Not so much having less carbs, because we all do that from time to time just naturally.  It was the fat.

Since I was keeping carbs at 100 and my protein requirement that I personally like is around 100 g – that left a lot of calories left over that I needed to eat.  So that meant fat.  Like butter, coconut butter, nuts (started to get out of hand with these), 2% milk.  I even moved to some half and half in my coffee.  I found out my body really likes the fat.  It kept me full.  In fact, I had to make sure I ate enough on some days.  It was such a great feeling to not have that nibbling urge.  I only had 1 day during February where I just out and out ate – and that was last week when I had some stress and just ate a lot of chocolate chips and nuts and granola.  The other day I ate a whole bunch of food was Superbowl Sunday.  Nuff said on that one. 😳

Anyway, there was a little bit of paranoia on my part that I would gain weight from eating all the fat, even though my calories were in check.  Still old prejudices there, although they are leaving.  I averaged 1704 calories per day during the month of February.  And less exercise than normal.  Now, I only did lower carb 3 to 4 days a week and my normal eating on the other days.  But overall, my whole monthly diet consisted of 40% fat.  On the lower carb days, it was as much as 65%.  And I still lost 3 pounds.

An experimental study of 1, but interesting nonetheless.  I was able to get in at least 20 grams of fiber on lower carb days, so not too low.  The not having cravings for sweets or just eating was the ultimate bonus in my book.

I could talk about this more, but I am sure many of you are like this:

Now back to regularly scheduled programming – afternoon snackage!

Fairly busy with work today, which is a great way to start out the week.  That latte kept me full until dinner (thank you 2% milk). Dinner was something different.  I stopped at the smokehouse yesterday to load up on meat for the freezer.  Sometimes you never know what kind of meats they will have.  They had cube steaks yesterday.  So I cooked one up to put atop some butter lettuce.  Topped with greek dressing and feta cheese.

This was really good.  I think I like the butter lettuce mix better than the spring mix I normally get.  I am not a big fan of the radicchio in it.

Tonight is the rest of the work and then a pumpkin snack:

Yeah, I recycled this picture for you LOL!

Question: What kind of salad mix is your favorite?

February goals

It’s a comin’! The snow’s a comin’! 😯   I knew I would have a chance to get in my lifting workout before it really hit. It was just starting to get a little sloppy out when I left the house this morning.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Lying Leg Press 3 sets of 10 at 100# Lower Body
Underhand Grip Lat Pull down 3 sets of 8 at 60# Back
Horizontal Wood Chop 3 sets of 10 at 30# Core
Incline Barbell Bench Press 3 sets of 10 at 45# Chest
Barbell Deadlift to Row 3 sets of 8 at 65# Full Body
Front Raise 3 sets of 10 with 8# DBs (16# total) Shoulders
Calf Raise 3 sets of 10 at 140# Calves
Low Back extension 3 sets of 10 at 100# Low back

Lots of people with my idea of getting in a workout today to be able to stay home tomorrow.  Then I jetted home to make some brekkie! I did the peanut flour waffles today. I modified the recipe from 1/3 cup of cottage cheese down to 1/4 and had no waffle runoff today! I will amend the recipe page with this.

Looks like this is just floating there.  Introducing the new Hover Waffle!  I topped with blueberry sauce, but I think that the banana or apple topping suits the flavor of this waffle much better. Note to self.

A nice full morning of work and then a break for lunch.  It’s a little cold for a salad, but I wanted to use up the rest of the salad mix so it didn’t go to waste.

Yesterday I wrapped up January, so today I plan the rest of February!

February goals:

1. Continue with weight loss efforts.  I weighed myself once for the month of January.  I think I will up that to once a week for February.

2.  Experiment with some eating protocols. Just for fun.  I might try doing a couple low carb days just to see what they are like.  Or more likely paleo/primal type eating.

3. Be more productive with my down time.  Down time is great, but I don’t need to spend it all on the computer or playing games.  That means reading more books, going out for events, etc.

4. Do more recipe cooking and not just meal assembly.

5.  Clean the house for 15 minutes each day a la Fly Lady.

I feel like my goals right now are a little more low key until things start to ramp up in spring with more outdoor stuff to do and I have something to train for.

Latte time.  My raw honey drizzle matched Pixie, so I thought I would coordinate her with my drink.

What’s Pixie thinking here:

a.  Stop touching me.

b. What the hell is that?

c. You woke me up for this?

Today went by really fast, I have to say.  Dinner was an egg sammie with laughing cow and hot sauce.

I had an Arnold sandwich thin as the bun. I have to thank Arnold for changing up their sucralose thins and now using stevia instead.  I can eat these again!

I need to scrounge up a snack for tonight.  Snow storm #1 done.  Now to hunker down for the biggun’.  And do my 15 minutes of cleaning 😀

Last Hot 100 update and monthly wrap up

Happy New Year’s Eve!!  It’s been a nice quiet day.  Very little work to do, but there may be some more tonight.

Since it was going to be 40 degrees out, I decided an outdoor run would be nice to do today.  That meant waiting until it actually got up to 40!  So breakfast it was!

Delicious protein waffles and apple cranberry topping.  I used fresh cranberries instead of dried because we had them.  Good choice.

The last Hot 100 update!  Thanks Steve for hosting this challenge to keep us all in line the last part of the year!

  1. Maintain my weight. The scale is going back down again as I have been eating really well this week.
  2. No eggnog lattes until Thanksgiving day!   This goal is done.
  3. Do the duathlon and at least 1 more 5K race before the end of the year. This goal is also done for the year.
  4. Do stretching exercises 4 days a week at least.  Did 4 days.
  5. Visit one new blog each week that is participating in the Hot 100 Challenge and cheer them on.  I’m still trying with this.  I wish I could have gotten around to everyone!
  6. Do one no-added sugar day each week.  Success!

Overall pretty pleased with the challenge.  I do have some work to do on my weight, but there is always next year hahaha!

After doodling around for most of the morning, I fixed lunch.

I like baking the breaded shrimp in the toaster oven.    After letting lunch settle for a while and watching Jeopardy,  I decided to go out for my run.  I did have an ulterior motive to this run.  John went for a walk and then our paths criss-crossed so I could use this:

Expires today!  I have had this coupon for over a year and never used it. Nothing like waiting until the last minute.  After 3.5 miles, I had a scoop of apple pie ice cream.

Hooray!  It tasted even better because it was free!

I was so sweaty, too.  Good thing I didn’t wear the turtleneck.  Then I ran the last 1/2 mile to home.  I think one should always stop for ice cream in the middle of a run.  4 miles done for the last day of the year.  Yay!

Now for a look at my personal goals for December.

  • Keep an eye on my portions.  I did okay with this.  I certainly ate a lot on Christmas eve and Christmas. Probably not as good as I did the year before.
  • Relax!  I am very go-go-go and forget to just chill out.  That means more reading and listening to music.  I did read more and played more computer games LOL
  • I will barbell squat 105 pounds with 6 reps by the end of the month.  I am at 95 right now, so I should make it.  Crap.  I did 100 pounds for 6 reps.  It was hard just adding the 5 pounds and getting 6 reps done, let alone 10.  Not sure what I was thinking there. Although I am proud at squatting 100 pounds.
  • Reflect on this past year.  Done!

Now I need to make my ‘to-do’ list for 2011.   No resolutions.  Just things to do and work towards.  No pressure.  I’ll ponder that this weekend.

I am going to sign off early for the holiday.  We don’t have much planned except trying to stay awake until midnight and watching movies.  Maybe playing a few video games:

Have a safe and Happy New Year and see you on the flip side!