This post is going to be filled with stuff, so be forewarned!

We woke up and decided to bike to Panera this morning.  Doesn’t it seem like my butt is planted on the bike permanently?

Blueberry bagel.  Yum!

John wanted to get a shot of me noshing, so here it is.

Nomf!!

We took it easy on the ride today as our legs were a bit tired from yesterday.  It was quite a hilly ride.

Started with work when I got home and after 200 lines this popped up.

Don’t like seeing that, because no files means I don’t get paid.  (Job #2 only has files Mon through Friday).  So, I did chores while waiting. After steam cleaning the carpets and eating lunch:

I checked work and still no files available.  You never know if they are going to come in or not.  I decided to write about July’s goals:

So, July goals were :

• Continue with at least 1 no-added sugar day a week.  This actually isn’t that hard, I have to say.  FAIL!  I actually kinda forgot about doing this. Oops.
• An 80-mile bike ride.  Gonna do at least that one, and likely finish out the 100 as well.  Kind of need to get that done so we can get back to normal biking Eeeep!! Well – we skipped right on over the  80 miles and did the 100!  I feel so awesome about that.
• Big challenge – I am not going to step on the scale for 30 days.  I weighed myself this morning and that is it for the month.   I did not weigh myself for 30 days and it was not that hard. I actually lost several pounds this month, too.
• Really practice mindful eating and mindful being.  Did this.  I really worked on mindless snacking, which is really what I attribute losing some weight to.

Not too bad.  The goals I have planned for August are:

• Compile my recipes into a cookbook, which I am going to give to anyone who sponsors my Team Challenge ride. (Will talk about this tomorrow)
• Continue working on the no snacking while preparing meals.
• Again, no weight goal this month, just being mindful of what I am eating.  I am going to weigh myself when I want to, though.
• I’ll probably add something else after I think for a bit.

After figuring out my goals and *still* no work,  I talked with my sister –  and since her husband and kids were visiting her in-laws, I popped down for a sister day!

The puppies were happy to see me.

We did some visiting and she made me a snack of some cheese toast with farmers market bread and cheese!

Her husband is the manager for a state tree nursery, and they are taking part in a study for using bio means for invasive plant control.  This test is for Phragmites, which chokes out cattails.  There is a stand of phrag (that tall stuff in the photo) on the property, so they are housing sheep for a month.  The idea is to see if the sheep will eat the weed if it is available.  This is the pen which these sheep are led into to see if they will eat the weed.

All that bare patch is from them eating the phrag.  They seem to like it.

Baaaaahhhhh!  So cute.  I wanted to hug them all.

We also saw a momma deer and her fawn on the way.

After this, it was shopping time!  I scored 2 new bowls, which will appear on the blog this week.  2 bowls for $7!!  I loves me a bargain.  My sister got a new Droid phone.  Lucky her!  After shopping, we were kind of hungry for dinner, so we stopped at Esperanto in Saratoga.

My sis:

I had the falafel pita with hummus.

It was delicious!  I forgot to get a picture of the cookie we each got to take home.  It was a cranberry oat cookie.

We made a pot of coffee and chatted and ate cookies.  It was certainly a nice way to play hooky!

I am home now, and there are only a couple of files to do.  Guess I am going to have to use some PTO for the day.

On a side note, if you want to help out a fellow blogger, John from Time to Challenge Myself has an entered a stridea to do 40 races by the time he reaches 40.  You can vote for his idea here.

Whew – I think that is enough for today! 😀