Category Archives: eating out

Football dinner

I am so glad the election season is over!!! Now can we please get back to being civil with each other?? Time to move forward. You know they always say you reap what you sow. So don’t start sowing anger and fighting, know what I mean? Try sowing compassion, open-mindedness and willingness to work together. Imagine what that could do.

We were up a bit later watching returns last night, so it was a tired morning heading off for Bagel Wednesday. (I think it deserves a capital B). Check out this morning’s temp:

That’s cold for early November. Or just cold, period. I think it was in the teens overnight. Just about time to break out the flannel sheets, I think.

This makes it all better, though.

Today is obviously not a lower carb day

Looks like we are escaping any heavy snow up here. It’s going to be south of us and a bit east. It did start to get breezy today and just kind of dreary weather.

I wanted a nice warm lunch.

BBQ turkey on a potato. Patent pending.

Today felt like Thursday for some reason. Maybe because yesterday felt like 2 days? I was ready for my latte today.

Nice crema on this one, too. Tasty!

So, after 3 weeks of Lori superiority, John finally won the football picks and he wanted to claim his dinner tonight. He was also nice enough to use a coupon for his meal. He decided to go to Dango’s Dugout. We had been here before and figured we would give it one more try. The bar section was busy, but the dining room was empty save for us.

Our meals came with some salad – all iceberg, but at least there was a cucumber on there.

You would think that with the place this empty that it wouldn’t take long to get food, wouldn’t you? It took forever! I studied my placemat and see this ad:

Nice phone number. Overreact much?

Our meals finally arrived. I had ordered broiled scallops. Who knew that meant they were broiled and then served in a dish of butter!

Gahhh! I had wanted a potato or rice, but since I had a potato at lunch and a bagel for breakfast, I chose broccoli instead. That was cooked well, at least. I did like my scallops and John liked his coconut shrimp, but without the $15 off coupon – this meal would *not* be worth the price. I think I would only go back for 5 cent wing night 😉

Poor John was a little disappointed in his football meal. Too bad he has to wait another 3 weeks before he wins again!

Dessert tonight?

You know it!

Date night!

It’s only Thursday, right? Wednesday was exhausting. It was a tiring day at work and all I could do at night was spend some time working in the garden.

Good gym workout today. I don’t think I see too much in the way of physical changes after 2.5 months on this program, but I am for sure much, much stronger. My posture is much better as well. Of course, if I was better on the food part, I would probably see more results. I have been kind of 70/30 instead of 90/10.

Breakfast upon return was the banana bread pudding topped with coconut butter. The nice thing about drinking a post workout shake is that I am not ready to gnaw my arm off and can wait while this cooks for breakfast.

Yum.

Work has been super busy of late. Not sure if it is because other people are taking an early holiday or what, but it has made it a little stressful because we are actually getting emails from the company about doing work. Normally we don’t hear too much and they just let us do our thing, but if the clients start yelling, then we get ‘urged’ along. I’ll take the work, though!

Lunch time! Needed to use up this chicken and we had dinner out planned, so lunch it is.

Check out my toes! When I got my hair cut the other day, my stylist gave me a sample bottle of nail polish. I didn’t want to do my fingers as I don’t care for the look of short nails and dark polish, plus I don’t have any polish remover. So, I did my toes! (You can see my sock imprint on the top of my feet-oops).

I did scare myself, though. This morning I got up and walked down the hallway. I looked at my feet and gasped because I had forgotten I did my toes and thought I hurt myself 😳

Quick afternoon snack.

I wouldn’t say this Larabar tasted like a blueberry muffin, but it had dried blueberries in it.

The rest of the day went pretty fast and we were glad to call it a day and head out for dinner. It’s been a hard week. John has been on a winning tear with poker, so I told him he needed to take me out for dinner. We had a coupon for 99 Restaurant, so that is where we headed to.

I love the free popcorn!

I had wanted one of the new lobster dishes. They had a lobster roll or a hot buttered lobster sandwich. However, I had looked up calories online prior to going and the calories were either 1400 or 1600! That’s almost a whole day of calories just for one entree. So, that was off the menu (har har).

Instead, I decided to be totally different and get the balsamic glazed salmon. I was a little skeered as I am newly venturing into fishy fish (I love seafood, though). My plate:

Looks delicious, no? It had grilled asparagus on the side with broccoli. Win-win! I *loved* the grilled asparagus. Must try that at home.

The salmon was very, very good. I really liked it. Not to mention the calories on this dish were 420.

We don’t like to eat at corporate restaurants that much, but I have to say that we are never disappointed at 99, which is why we come back. Prices are very good, service always good and we like the food.

After that, it was a stroll around the mall. Date night includes shopping at Target – how is that for romantic? It was really nice to get out and about, though. Yay!

Vacation eating

So, regarding our vacation, we are going to be gone to Disney World for 6 days. Ish asked a question that I figured other people might have as well about eating while on vacation.

Out of curiosity, how do you handle the urge to splurge on food when you are traveling? Do you get hit with that, “Well I’m on vacation so it’s ok to have….” impulse, or are you immune to it now? I always have a hard time when pulled out of my regular environment. It just makes me feel like it’s ok to go overboard, even when I know it is not and I will pay for it later!

I started to answer in the comment, but the realized it was going to be a very long-winded answer. 😳

The short answer is “It depends”. First off, we don’t really vacation very often. The last time John and I traveled was at the end of 2010 when we went to visit his family in Colorado. That trip I was more concerned about eating because when we visit his family, we eat out a lot and they are not usually places that are easy to eat on the lighter side (and not much exercise). That makes it hard.

I am certainly not immune to the pull of ‘vacation food.’ Heck, I have trouble being immune to peanut butter cups at my sister’s house!

When we go to New Orleans, all bets are off on food. No restrictions at all there because it is a wonderful city to eat in – especially if you are a foodie. I eat there whatever I want, knowing that I am going to have to take off weight after a trip there. And I am okay with that.

For Disney, we aren’t going there for the food. Let’s face it – large volume theme park food is not going to be gourmet. The great thing about Disney, though, is that there are plenty of opportunities to eat very healthy there. It’s just a matter of choosing those options. I am more conscious about eating on a longer trip because I could do some serious damage in 6 days of eating whatever fell onto my plate. I do have a plan for this week, which is going to be normal breakfasts of oats or eggs with fruit, and a lighter lunch. John and I looked online at places to eat to make sure we can get things that aren’t so far removed from how we usually eat and have sort of a plan of which places to go to in the various parks. That helps so we don’t walk into the first deep fried chicken nugget basket we find.

If you do plan on going to any Disney park some time, check out All Ears.Net. They have current menus and pricing for pretty much all the restaurants and eateries, which has been a great help when trying to stay on a healthier track, or budget track for that matter. Also, they have healthy options for snacks in all the parks, like fresh fruit, frozen yogurt, frozen fruit bars, popcorn. Although I do tend to like my afternoon lattes.

The best link on that site? Where to find real coffee at Disney You know I am printing that list out.

So, I don’t plan on snacking my way through Disney. We will certainly be doing a lot of walking, so I am not that concerned about having some treats in there. I just have to be careful not to go overboard. I do tend to expect I will have weight gain from vacations. Not always because of eating choices, but because of the food being different from what we normally eat. It usually has more sodium than we consume, so I always get travel bloat.

So, long answer is that yes, I do find I want to just splurge on food on vacation. I just have to find a way to compromise with it and not make it every meal.

And what if it happens where all my good eating intentions go to hell? It is okay. It’s just so not worth it to beat yourself up over food. It’s just not. If I am going to gain weight from something, I damn well better enjoy eating it.

Bench press tips and football dinner!

Off to the gym this morning. There was frost on the car! I was at the gym a little later than normal by 7:30. There were only a hand full of people there. I am liking that a lot. And nobody really annoying either – bonus!

Exercise	Set/rep/weight	Muscle worked
Barbell Chest Press	3 sets of 10 with 50# bar	Chest
Stiff-legged deadlift	3 sets of 10 with 55# bar	Lower body
Seated Cable Lat Row	3 sets of 10 at 50#	Back
Decline Sit ups	3 sets of 10	Core
Lying Leg Press	3 sets of 10 at 100#	Lower Body
Arnold Press	3 sets of 10 with 10# DBs (20# total)	Shoulders
Triceps Push Down	3 sets of 10 at 30#	Triceps
Standing Calf Raise	3 sets of 10 at 70#	Calves

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?

Anniversary Dinner – Bistro Leroux

Thank you all so, so much for the anniversary wishes! We don’t exchange gifts, but we did go out to a nice dinner last night and then since this is a special anniversary (15), we are going to do a champagne brunch cruise on Lake George this weekend.

Anyway, I thought I would show you what we had for dinner last night. Bistro LeRoux is fairly new and is chef owned an operated. It is an upscale bistro and super charming outside and inside.

I have to say that I love the trend of restaurants serving the small plate option. This allows us to get an appetizer if we want and not feel stuffed. Also, it makes it much more affordable!

Bistro Leroux does a variety of dishes from gluten free, to vegan and omnivore, plus they have their own vegetable garden.

We split an appetizer of crab cakes.

These were ah-mazing! Very good crab with chunks of meat. The slaw on top was very interesting as was the chipotle cilantro. Neither of us likes cilantro at all, but I would not have guessed there was any in it. It almost tasted like pesto. So good!

My entree was half portion of Apple Braised Chicken Waldorf.

This was also excellent and had such a nice contrast of flavors and textures. The only thing I didn’t like was the bits of celery in the Waldorf salad (but I just don’t like celery that much). It had a parmesan risotto underneath. Love!

John had the half portion wild sea scallops with garlic mashed potatoes and prosciutto wrapped asparagus.

Also very delicious and the scallops were so moist! I have never had prosciutto before, so I tried some of John’s. It was like really flavorful bacon 😀

Since these portions were smaller, we decided to split dessert. We split the chocolate lava cake.

This was good, but didn’t bowl us over like the other items.

Definitely recommended! After that, we went to my sister’s house to distribute those squinkies to my niece 😀

Crepe-ing around

Hello blogosphere from busy-ville 😀 I slept good last night, so no ill effect from reintroducing caffeine. although I did wake up early, but I think that was due to my sleep mask falling off during the night. Since I was up early, I went out for a nice bike ride. Streets are somewhat quiet at 6:30 am. I have never ridden that early before. Usually it is 6:50 as the earliest. I did a 6.5 mil ride.

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?

Throwdown at Golden Corral

Happy Birthday to my dad! He is the same age and has the same birthday as Bob Dylan. 😀 His choice to eat out for dinner is Golden Corral. He loves that place.

But first, there was my day. We are in the midst of a long rain spell right now. That means no outdoor biking.

I hopped on the trainer for 20 minutes before we headed out to Bagel Wednesday! We stopped at Orange Cat, where I had a blueberry bagel.

Very tasty. It came with a portioned cream cheese this week, which makes counting the calories really easy, I have to say.

Work was super busy. This whole week has been super busy. I am not sure why, but it can be a good thing if we don’t get overwhelmed.

Protein for lunch today. Since I knew I would be eating a lot of veggies with dinner, I didn’t want any with lunch.

I made an open-faced BBQ chicken sandwich on a slice of the sourdough bread. Yum!

The rest of the day went fast. Pixie slept away the day. What else to do when the weather is icky?

I knew I needed to redeem myself a little for all the eating on Sunday at the picnic, so Golden Corral was a chance to do that.

I had a plan going into Golden Corral. Kind of the same as last year for my dad’s birthday. Funny how that was the last time I was at Golden Corral, too, for his birthday! Just not our choice of dining establishments.

The plan:

All the fruits and veggies I want to have.
Lean seafood protein, not breaded or fried.
Small baked potato
Possible fruity dessert (cobbler type) if desired
Talk lots with family.

I wrote this part of the post before leaving the house.

Here is how I did:

For those that are not familiar, Golden Corral is just a giant buffet.

Lots and lots of food of varying nutritional value:

My starter plate was a salad that contained some hardboiled egg, cheese, carrots, cucumber and a drizzle of dressing:

Plus a bowl of berries and fresh pineapple.

This fruit was most excellent!

Happy Birthday Poppa!

It’s a weeknight, so half the family is missing.

After eating this, I went for my hot plate. Lots of corporate meat on the buffet (it was rib night), and most of the seafood was breaded. I kind of expected that. There was one fish dish that was not breaded, but you know me and my love of fish 🙄

Hot plate – lots of broccoli (I took all that was left LOL). A baker with some sour cream and butter on the side (hooray for fat!). A hush puppy and about a tablespoon of artichoke dip to try.

A little lean on protein, but I did have some egg and cheese on my salad. Glad I got in protein with lunch. I ate probably about half of the potato. The hush puppy was really good, too!

I went over to peruse the dessert bar.

Of course, this all looks decimated, but it is only a tiny portion of the entire bar, including an ice cream bar. I looked long and hard. After looking at everything, I decided it was not worthy and got more fruit instead because it was so tasty.

Okay, I lied. I got one thing off the dessert part – the chocolate dipped piece of pineapple. Now *that* was good! I had one bite of John’s chocolate cake to try. It was good, but kind of reaffirmed that the fruit was the right choice for me.

It is possible to eat very well at Golden Corral or totally indulge. Whatever you feel like doing. Right now I am satisfied and not over full and really pleased with myself LOL. The only thing missing from my plan was more lean protein, but that was a function of the buffet and not me. Sometimes I can make a plan and stick to it!

Golden Corral: 0 – Lori: 1+

Weekend roundup with Mediterranean food!

Thanks so much for your congrats on the job situation! I really didn’t realize how much stress I was under until it all fell into place. I was so happy working at home again on Friday. Hopefully on Monday I will feel the same LOL!

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?

Lifting and the last football dinner.

Happy Thursday! It’s almost the end of the week! Yippee! I was up and ready to hit the gym. After a protein drink, I headed out and got to work.

Exercise	Set/rep/weight	Muscle worked
Barbell Squats	3 sets of 10 at 75#	Lower Body
Alternating bent dumbbell row	3 sets of 10 with 20# DBs (40# total)	Back
Reverse Crunch	3 set of 15	Core
Pushups	3 sets of 10	Chest
Calf Raise	3 sets of 10 at 170#	Calves
Upright Row	3 sets of 10 at 30#	Shoulders
Good Morning	3 sets of 10 at 55#	Low back and hammies
Reverse Lunge with Forward Reach	3 sets of 8 (each leg) with 8# DBs (16# total)	Full body

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?

Paying the football piper

It was a dark and early morning when I got up to run. Am I the only one that forgets that it is a new year? Guess when you stick to the same schedule it will feel that way. Definitely not running outside! I snagged a Vanilla Almond Luna bar as a pre-run snack.

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: