Category Archives: work

Non-edible candy corn and work woes

 

Half way through October. Can you believe it?  I can’t. I guess I have to, though. Can’t stop time and get off!

I cleaned up a lot of the garden for the season:

 

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Now that I have said I was taking care of the stray kittens, I have not seen them.  Go figure.  I don’t want to just put food out because any old cat can come by and eat it. We have lots of ‘owned’ cats that like to come through our property, too.  I don’t need to be feeding them. 😯

Sunday was football day and a good time to be painting my nails!  I decided if I didn’t have any candy corn in the house to eat, I could pretend with my nails!

nails

This took a while to do, but what better time than during a football game, right? 😉  On a side note, Debby asked about my nail length and guitar playing. This is my right hand (duh) and the nails actually aren’t that long – just to the edge of my fingertips, but you do play with your nails some with classical guitar. My left hand nails are much shorter since I need the tips to press on the frets.

Yesterday was a holiday, I guess?  I worked all day as my clinics were open.  It was busy.  It has been busy for months, too.  Yes, this is a good thing, but due to the management, it is poorly handled and has been for months now. We have been getting calls to work weekends – at 8:30 in the morning, no less. On both days.  I have been called while on vacation to work, even though I let them know I would be out of town. I ended up a stretch where I just worked 12 days in a row.  I already do a lot more than the minimum the company requires and I will try and help out when they really need it.  However, even only working a few extra hours on each Saturday and Sunday starts to take a toll when you already put in a full work week.  Supposedly all these people were hired, but we are still behind.

Today, all hell broke loose. We got calls and emails about working, doing more, more, more. Clients are threatening to leave.  Honestly – I just don’t know what they expect if they have not hired more people.  If we lose the 2 clients, that is 95% of my work.  As an independent contractor, I don’t get unemployment, so this is somewhat distressing to me, I have to say.  I can’t do much about it other than to try to work even more, but it’s getting pretty stressful. I cannot control what other people do and now it is just a matter of waiting to see what happens.

Anyway, that makes me want to stress eat. My emotional eating pitfall.  So that’s the fun in my life lately…

However, more important things!

Pink picture of the day was sent to my by Julianne!  Cupcakes and coffee together – it’s me in a picture!

pinkcup

The Breast Cancer Site

Tulips and Dragon training

*blink*blink*

Was there a weekend that just went by? I need another one.  I am beat today! Rest day on tap with only walking. We actually had to turn our furnace on. The house got down to 62 degrees, so we caved in and turned it on. With the new windows we got last year, the sun doesn’t warm up the house because we got the e-glass for efficiency.

I made up some warm banana custard oats today topped with pecans and some really yummy apple butter I got from my jam swap partner!

Tasty and nice on a cold morning.

I hope I am officially done with the flat tires. This is not even close to a normal happening. I went 5 years with no flats, then I had 1 each of the last 2 years and now the crazy amount this year. Of course, I have put over 2500 miles on this bike since I got it last August, but I also learned to not use regular tires on my bike trainer in the winter.  Using the trainer will cause the tire to become square and have problems.  So, I saved the old tire to put on the back when the bike comes inside in a couple months.  Or I can ride the trainer without the resistance wheel and just use my gears, which is more likely to happen because I really hate taking the tires off.

Lunch break!

BBQ chicken and some organic grapes. I don’t usually go out of my way to buy organic fruit, but organic grapes were on sale for $1.99 a pound!!

Another beautiful day here.  Good thing because after work I have to plant these:

More bulbs.  I only got 33 bulbs this year.  I was smart and mapped out my garden a couple weeks ago on graph paper and looked at my photos from the spring to see where I had bulbs and marked where space was available for new ones.  I actually am on the ball this year! It only took me 5 years to to this…

Latte break. Giving my approval to John’s barista skilz.

On the work front, I decided to go ahead and buy the speech recognition software to do echo dictation rather than straight typing and see if I can save my hands and wrists.  I have been having arthritis pains in my hands and since I type for 6.5 hours a day just for work (not counting blogging and emails and general stuff), I am trying to be proactive.  I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking, so I am now training my Dragon to love me and my speech patterns.

I am going to try to have it write my blog posts starting tomorrow and hopefully be on board with work at the end of the week. There is a lot of medical terminology that Dragon needs help with (cholodochojejunostomy anyone?).

It’s actually pretty amazing at how accurate it is right out of the box.

I wasn’t sure what to have for dinner tonight, but as I went into the kitchen, John had the popcorn fish out  and I knew that was what I wanted!

Then John and I took a nice long walk.  Cool evening, but nice.  Now it is time to work with Dragon  and Monday Night Football!

Question: Do you purchase organic regularly?

Working from home and scheduling

Bagel Wednesday!  We had to try the new coffee shop as they had my favorite bagels there from Uncommon Grounds in Saratoga.  Problem is, the shop is only a little over a mile from our house.  So, we just got on the bikes and wound around town to put some miles on.  What a gorgeous morning, too! We got around to the shop and they are having a grand opening with free coffee.  Triple dip score!!!

So far, they only have plain cream cheese, which is okay by me, but John likes flavored.  Check out that nice bagel and the presentation!

2 bagels with cream cheese and 2 coffees only $3 plus tax.  How awesome is that??  The owner used to work at Uncommon Grounds, so he gets a good deal on coffee and baked goods from them, which he passes on apparently.

We biked around for a while and back home.  10.5 miles today at a 13.4 mile per hour pace.  Not too shabby! 😀

Cute thing – I got home and was in the kitchen taking my vitamins when I heard “Brrrritttt”.  Those of you with cats know exactly what I mean.  I looked around and saw this:

She has never gotten up there that I can remember, so I don’t know what was up with that LOL  Jody – I thought of you when I took this picture!

I did a little work before showering to get some of it caught up.  It still has been sooooo busy and I didn’t want files to fall too far behind their turn around time (I am such a good worker – totally worth that raise!).

I thought I would talk a little bit about working at home and how it is to keep a schedule and all that.  For those that don’t know – I work at home as a transcriptionist.  I don’t know if there is a more sedentary job than that.  Really.  All I do is listen, type, and edit.  My environment has to be very quiet, too – so no music or distractions like that.

A lot of people think of how great it is to work at home, but they do not realize that you have to have a very distinct personality to do so.  You actually have to be more disciplined than if you go into an office.  The old company I worked for had a specific time window for me to work in on certain days, but my current one has no set schedule.  I can work any hours and any days to meet the commitments for them. There is no one sitting there and telling me to get to work or to get to the gym or even mow the lawn.  It’s all on me.

I have found that I need to have as set a schedule as possible in order to be the most productive.  I normally wake up pretty early, which is something I am trying to work on with Operation Sleep this month.  I do like to do my workouts first thing in the morning to get them done, plus it is just a nice way to start the day.  Although with biking season, I tend to do that more in the evening with John during the week.  Strength training is always done in the morning to avoid the afternoon preeners at the gym.  Exercise is nonnegotiable for me.  Like Nike says – Just Do It.  No excuses.

I start my work day no later than 10 am, most times a little earlier.  I make sure that I work straight through.  When I stop typing, I stop earning money, so I won’t open my google reader until lunch break or the evenings.  Although I occasionally get Fridayitis and goof around a little.

Segue…

Let’s take a lunch break, shall we?  Our porch is shaded until mid afternoon, so it was still nice to sit outside and eat lunch.

Yes, the plate was precariously balanced.

Speaking of food and working at home, this can be quite tough.  My house is filled with foods I like to eat because… well, I live here.  It is very easy to get up and go to the pantry and get a snack.  Calories add up whether they are dates, nuts, cheese, chocolate, crackers, blueberries – any ‘healthy’ treat.  It all seems innocent until you have eaten 5 snacks during the day because you can.  And it is very easy to make snacks if I want.  All the ingredients are in the pantry to bake anything, really.  Slow day at work? How about cookies??  Although I am pretty good about that.  I do have to have some things kept up high that start to get my snack engine revving, which helps a fair degree, but I can always pull over a chair if I really want something.  I think keeping an eating/snacking schedule is just as hard at home as it is in an office, if not more so!

So yes, there are some great benefits to working at home, but it isn’t always easy.

Speaking of snacks – I received a bag of these from FoodBuzz for the Tastemaker program.  I love Fig Newtons and these are like crunchy newtons.

Very interesting. They have the Newton taste, but are thin and crispy.

Note that 2 are pictured, but I ended up eating 6 of them!! That’s 2 servings. Addictive little buggers.  Guess these need to go up high…

We hit a high in the mid 90s today.  Hot!!  Funny how 6 months ago we were at minus 27 degrees and today 90 degrees.  Now that is a wide range of temps.

Our house stayed a cool 79 degrees with no AC on with our new windows.  Yes indeedy – worth the $$$ putting those in.

I did want a cool dinner, though.  I had the forethought to put some oats into vanilla greek yogurt and let those soak for a couple hours.  Then when dinner rolled around, I added some chopped strawberries and cinnamon!

Looks like a mess, but cool and refreshing.  Kind of a pseudo muesli  (does anyone else find that name kind of icky?)

I do have to do a little more work tonight as it was a tough slog with some of the doctors today, but otherwise a relaxing evening at home – and staying out of the Fruit Thins!

My decision – with a twist!

Friday! I am happy, are you? I was ready for the gym after having a protein drink.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Barbell Squat 3 sets of 12 at 55# Lower Body
Wide Grip Lat Pull Down 3 sets of 15 at 45# Back
Lying Chest Fly 3 sets of 15 with 10# DBs Chest
Reverse Crunch 3 sets of 15 Core
Standing single-leg calf raise 3 sets of 10 each leg with 35# bar Calves and balance
Bent lateral raise 3 sets of 12 with 12# DBs (24# total) Shoulders
Good Mornings 3 sets of 12 at 55# Low back and hammies
Alternating side lunges 3 sets of 10 (each leg) with 15# DBs (30# total) Lower body

You know, my abs were still sore from the incline situps I did on Wednesday!  That is an awesome move.  Or I need to work my core harder.  Not sure which.

Zipped home for breakfast. Last year I was riding to the gym in the morning because it was just warm enough. Not this year! Still in the teens overnight. Booo…

Breakfast was so yummy.  I had some Wheatena that I added some egg whites to.  Topped with a banana sauteed in a tsp of butter and cinnamon and some of that yummy coconut butter.  With a side of cafe au lait.

This was tres delicious!

For those curious, this bowl has 385 calories in it.

I then got to work – at home!  I am returning home to work.  But not for the new company.  I thought I had 2 options:  Work for new company at home or work with old employee at the office.   Since I was in the office, I spoke quite a bit with the owner this week.

A little background here:  There are 250 transcriptionists employed by my company, so it is not a huge company in terms of the MT world, but big enough so the owner usually doesn’t talk to the individual MTs (we go through managers).  No MTs work in the office, all are at home.  The owner is incredibly nice and she wanted to make sure I was happy working in the office before making me an official employee rather than a contractor.  She put me on more accounts so I had work, which was the only reason I was leaving the company (other than more pay being offered to me) As you know, I was very conflicted about this and talked to her.

Well, lo and behold, she offered that I could go back home, but with a big raise so that I wouldn’t leave her company.  Of course I leapt at that opportunity!  I am going to be making more money than the new job would have offered, plus I can keep my schedule flexibility instead of working from 2 to 10 with a weekend day like I would have.  Funny – all I had to do was go to the top to get this figured out.  It never hurts to ask.  I am over the moon now and this company has my complete loyalty for a long time to come (at least until I start my donut/bagel shop haha!). :mrgreen:

Working at home meant no lunch packing and no eating out of containers today.  I brought tuna back for another go ’round this week. 🙄 I did lemon pepper.

On side side is my new favorite evening snack (yes, I realize it is lunchtime).  I mix canned pumpkin with cinnamon and topped with toasted pecans and tablespoon of cream.

This tastes so good!  My tongue is very used to nonsweetened stuff now and I can taste the natural sweetness of the pumpkin.  Libby’s brand must have some special pumpkin they grow because it tastes different than other brands. (I can’t believe I am a canned pumpkin connoisseur, but there you go).

Afternoon break and I had something I haven’t had for 3 days!

See the happy lady?  I keep waiting for something weird to happen and I will be unemployed come Monday.  That’s because we tend to have some unfortunate luck.

Dinner time!  I had some BBQ chicken with sauteed brussel sprouts.

Those strawberries are standing at attention!  They were so good.  I need more…

To celebrate the homecoming, John and I are out for coffee (decaf)!

We might even go over to the mall before it closes.  Gotta live it up!

Oh, and we passed our permit inspections, so work will progress on the half bath this weekend!

Question: What is your favorite way to eat pumpkin?

Office update

It’s Wednesday. You know what that means! But first the iron.  No dillydallying this morning with having to go into the office.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Cable Squat to Row 3 sets of 12at 50# Full Body
Barbell Stiff-legged deadlift 3 sets of 12 at 65# Lower body
Decline sit up 3 sets of 10 Core
Pushups 3 sets of 10 Chest
Seated Calf Raise 3 sets of 15 at 140# Calves
YTWL 3 sets of 5 each letter with 5# DBs (10# total) Shoulders
Plie Squat 3 sets of 10 with 35# DB Lower Body
Low Back Extension 3 sets of 15 at 80# Low back

Then I came home for a bagel.

Yep – at home! We stopped at Panera Bread last night and picked up a couple bagels to have for breakfast. There just wasn’t enough time for me to work out, get John, have bagels, take him home and me go to the office to work. We only have 1 car and no biking yet.

So how is that going, you ask? Yesterday was an interesting day. It was like doing my job that I do every day at home, only doing it in a different place. The people in the office are very nice, but I didn’t talk too much, since I had work to do. I am the only one in the office that does transcription. Everyone else does either administration work or IT work. I think they don’t quite know what to make of me LOL!

I was worried about bringing in all my food as I wasn’t sure what to expect for the office area, but it was quite cushy! There is a big fridge, microwave, and one of those Keureg brewer things with all kinds of coffee to choose from. I had brought my own milk in a jar with a french press and coffee, but turns out I only needed the milk!

It is kind of in the middle of nowhere outside of town.  This is the view outside:

Complete with the snow that is never going away!  Biking here would be  a little tough.

Here is a view of my work station. I have a window! Plus 2 big screens to look at, which is quite different from using my little netbook.

A little messy as it took me some time to get organized.

I am having some ergonomic problems getting used to this desk and chair, and they are getting me a keyboard drawer so I am more comfortable. The office is very laid back. Almost too much so. I have to really do some thinking.  I have one more question to ask tomorrow, and then I can make a decision.

Lunch time at work was part of my packed stash:

Plain greek yogurt with some honey, chopped strawberries, and flax seed. Yum!

This office likes to eat. Yesterday they did Taco Bell, today another restaurant as take out, not to mention that they brought in Dunkin Donut bagels this morning.  Maybe they know it is bagel Wednesday?? I didn’t have any of this stuff.  I don’t want to seem rude or anything, but I also don’t want to feel pressured to eat foods that I don’t normally eat.

I did, however, take full advantage of the Keurig coffee brewer!  Yay!  Lots of choices of coffee to have.  I bring my own milk because they just have the CoffeeMate creamers (hello trans fats). Not to mention the creamers are sweet, which I don’t care for.

I had a snack of some coconut bread.

This bread is more like a cornbread biscuit and keeps me full because it has fat in it.  I’ll post the recipe tomorrow.

I was glad to get home.  I am the last one to leave the office.  That last half hour or so is so silent.  It makes me have a lot of feelings of separation anxiety from John.  That is also something I am struggling with.

I came home and made a quick dinner.  Eating later is easier when I have some precooked items.

I had chicken with laughing cow and the last squidges of hot sauce ( 😯  ).  Maybe there is one more serving in the bottle.

John got up to shenanigans while I was gone today.  He made up some of the cutest little chocolate chip cookies with some peanut flour in them.

That’s a snack for tonight.  I need to decompress, practice guitar, and I think I will hop on the trainer to do the decompression!

My options

The first full day of spring, and what do we get?

It’s like winter left giving us a swift kick in the pants on the way out. Or spring is messing with us. Either way it isn’t very nice…

I am going back to lifting 3 days a week now with the lowering of the weights/increased reps, so I was up fairly raring to go today.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Barbell Split Squat 3 sets of 10 (each leg) at 65# Lower Body
Dumbbell 1-point row 3 sets of 12 with 20# DB Back
Captain’s Chair 3 sets of 10 Core
Low Back Extension 3 sets of 15 at 80# Low back
Barbell Chest Press 3 sets of 15 with 45# bar (which is an empty bar, btw) Chest
Reverse Lunge/forward reach 3 sets of 15 with 8# DBs (16# total) Full Body
Upright row 3 sets of 12 at 25# Shoulders
Seated Calf Raise 3 sets of 15 at 140# Calves

Whew! I did super sets with these in groups of 2, so it was a nice compact 30 minute workout.

I made it home before it started to snow, but you could smell it on the air. John doesn’t understand that, but you can smell when snow is coming.

I decided to play with the 1-minute muffin for breakfast. Instead of doing it in the microwave as a muffin, I put it into a pan with a tiny bit of butter to make a pancake.

Topped with peanut flour mixed with a little bit of cinnamon, salt and enough water to make it like frosting. (You can use PB2).

I have to say that I liked this cooking method better than the microwave for this! It almost is like an oatcake in density. I was a little worried it wouldn’t cook through, so I just had it on lower heat and cooked a little longer. 1-minute muffin becomes 5-minute flax cake. Winner!

I alluded to this on Friday, but here is my current dilemma.  The company that I currently work for, which I was unable to get full time with after losing one of my other jobs, has just offered me a full-time position in house.  Most of you know I do the work at home as an independent contractor.

– The new position I was offered with another company:

Employee. Hours 2pm to 10 pm Sunday through Thursday.  No commute.  Paid on production at a decent line rate (but that depends on the dictators and platform, really).  PTO.  Fairly affordable benefits.

– What was offered by current company on Friday:

Working in the office as an employee (currently IC with them). Hourly rate (which is quite good) with the opportunity to do production if it made more than the hourly rate (possible, although very dependent on the dictation quality). Hours 10-6 Monday through Friday.  Commute of 11 miles each way.  PTO.  Benefits available, although not that great price wise.

So.  Both definitely have their pros and cons. I haven’t worked outside in over 3 years since I was flipping houses,  – so I wasn’t even working for someone else then.  I would miss the freedom of working at home, but the schedule and pay is so much better.  Why they didn’t offer me this before is beyond me, although it is a new option they are trying to implement and I would be the first (eek!).

I do get to go into the office on Tuesday and try it out to see if I like working there.  That is pretty cool that we can test it out like that.  The company is fairly relaxed, which is one of the reasons I liked working for them.  We shall see what transpires tomorrow…

Lunch time!  Been on a real meat kick lately. The smokehouse has had some good stuff.

This pork burger was bigger than planned, but when I weighed out the meat that was left, I thought putting an ounce back into the fridge was pretty pointless.  Hooray for extra protein on lifting days!

Speaking of extra protein, I supplemented my latte with some whey protein (2% milk today).

Pixie not happy I came and messed with her space for this shot.  She will miss me tomorrow, though. :mrgreen:

I decided to go meatless for dinner tonight.  That meant eggs for me!

For the brussel sprouts, since I get a lot of questions, I just slice very thin and pan saute with some coconut oil, salt, and pepper.  This is my favorite way to cook brussels (roasting is 2nd).

Tonight I need to get my stuff together to go to the office. This means I have to plan some meals to take with and pack all of my work stuff.  I guess the slippers need to stay at home, though…

I’ll be snacking on this while I make my list:

** FYI – this is one of my lower carb days.  I had 85 grams of carbs and 27 grams of fiber.  Goes to show you can reduce your carbs and still get in a decent amount of fiber if you make the right food choices.

Back to routine? Not so fast.

Well, rather large change happened to me today, which I was totally not expecting.  But let’s start with the morning first, shall we?

It’s getting harder and harder to leave the house in the morning. There seems to be a correlation between the dropping temperature and my desire to go outside 😀  At least it is showing some hints of being light out before 7 now.  That means spring is almost here, right??

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Cable Squat to Row 3 set of 10 at 60# Full body
Dumbbell Pull Over 3 sets of 10 at 30# Back
Lying Leg Press 3 sets of 10 at 100# Lower Body
Reverse Crunches 3 sets of 15 Core
Pushups 3 sets of 10 Chest
Nose Breakers 3 set of 15 at 25# Triceps
Bent Lateral Raise 3 sets of 10 with 15# DBs (30# total) Shoulders
Seated Calf Raise 3 sets of 10 at 140# Calves
Lower Back Extension 3 sets of 10 at 100# Low Back

Felt good today. I haven’t lifted since last Wednesday, so I was rested and strong. Makes me think I need to either drop full body down to 2 days a week or start up a split routine.  I do need to shake something up at any rate.

I came home for some brekkie and decided to break out the peanut flour!

This is what it looks like.

This is the most basic thing you can do with it.  Mix it with water to make peanut butter.

Now, you do need to add a bit of salt or sweetener to make it taste more like peanut butter, otherwise it is pretty bland.  I added a tiny pinch of salt.

Then I made some cream of wheat with egg white whisked in and topped with the newly formed PB. With some chocolate honey.

See how much that makes?  That is about 55 calories  for 2 tbsp versus 100 for a tablespoon of regular PB.  Not that I am giving up the nut butter, but this is a nice alternative when I just want more.

I need to do some ‘sperimenting with it.  I see the 1-minute muffin being a possibility, or possibly some kind of soup.

Speaking of muffins,  John made up some of his protein muffins while I was away.  He did them lemon poppyseed flavor.  I had to have half of one crumbled over some greek yogurt with strawberries for lunch.

This was excellent!  Although I wish it was not so cold outside 😀

So on to my afternoon. Those of you on Facebook already know what I am going to say here.   After lunch, I got an instant message from my supervisor at job #1 asking if she could call me.   Phone calls usually are not a good sign as pretty much everything is conducted by email or instant message.  Effective immediately, all part-time employees have been laid off due to slow work.  No warning or anything.  Just done in the middle of the day, no finishing of the day.  They want to preserve all the work for the full-time employees.  Then they actually had the nerve to ask if I wanted to be put on their waiting list to come back if work picked up.  🙄  No thanks.  Phone call ended with “Good luck”.  Not even a thank you for all the work.  Nice, eh?  2 years of work for them and booted out just like that.

Good thing I have the 2nd part-time job, which I hope can become full time until I figure out what to do.

John made lattes and I thought about the situation.

Bright side – no Sunday work unless I want to and no set schedule.  Plus I get all my accrued time off in one lump sum (2 weeks’ worth).  Scary part?  No guarantee I can get full time at my other job, and this could just as easily happen again in this industry.  2011 sure is turning out interesting so far…

Time for dinner!  John cooked up some pork while I made brussels (just for me).  I had a banana with dinner to change things up as well.

I need to make a light box or something for better pictures.  Either that or spring needs to get here!

I get to polish up the old resume tonight, which I will do while snacking on this:

Chocolate heals all, doesn’t it?

Ridin’ solo

I was excited to get up to ride this morning.  I think I have an addiction to biking or something.  😯   I had to wear a backpack with spare tube, pump, tools, etc, which I don’t like, but that’s the case until the racks arrive.  I fueled up with a Zone bar:

Then I hit the road while John was still sleeping.  I went south down the main road, which has a nice wide bike lane.

The other nice thing is that the bridge connecting this road with another main road is closed, so there was almost no traffic going through, which is awesome.  It’s fairly flat, so I was booking along and pretty excited at how fast I was going.  Turned around after 11 miles and straight into a head wind. D’oh!  That was a tough slog home.  I stopped to take a few pictures:

I am smiling before coffee.  Who knew?

22 miles in the books in 1:30. Not too shabby!  I was famished when I got home.  I was thinking I was going to go 15, but ended doing an extra 7.  Probably should have brought at least some coconut water, as the Zone bar didn’t quite get me through to the end.

Nomf!! It almost looks like yin and yang, doesn’t it?  But that is PB and J in a nutshell anyway.

Loooooong workday today.  It’s one of the 10-hour days, which is basically Mon-Thurs right now.  I am so glad I don’t have a commute, although I guess my ride this morning could qualify for that.  I almost felt guilty about going for a long ride this morning because I should get right  to work, but then realized that is crazy.  Nothing comes before me and my health.

Lunch break!

Ahhhh…. the excitement of tuna.

I had a dictator today that drove me crazy.  He was eating while dictating, which a lot of doctors do, but he was totally chomping on food and talking with his mouth stuffed full and lipsmacking.  And it was over several different reports.  I was so grossed out after the 3rd one.  Sometimes the doctors forget there is actually someone on the other end of these things.  One MT told a story about how the doc forgot to turn off the recorder and took it into the bathroom.  Ewwww…..

Had to take a break!

I also had a couple Dove promises that got snarfed before I remembered to take a picture.

Dinner was all about the fast today. I did a quick microwave scrambled egg with laughing cow on a bun.

Hot sauce destined to be on the sammie!  Dinner ready in 10 minutes, ate in 5.

Made a fun snack.  I had the homemade fluff, which I put on a graham cracker and used one of those torch lighters to toast my fluff and sprinkled on a few chips.

Outstanding.  S’mores without the smoke.

I apologize on being behind on blogs.  These long days are temporary, thank goodness.  Back to work after this, but probably only for another hour or so.

Lifting move of the week tomorrow.  Can’t believe Wed is coming up so fast!

Bagels and mastering long-term weight loss

Full 8 hours of sleep last night!  Guess I need to bike 40 miles in order for that to happen.  Legs felt decent, so we went ahead and bike to Panera Bread.  I forgot my jacket, and it was indeed very cold in there.  Oh well, that meant hot coffee with my french toast bagel.

Paper reading and chatting commenced.  Do you ever feel like your brain is all over the place sometimes?  Mine is.

Biked home and settled in for a day’s work.  Busy right from the start, too.

Lunch break and I wanted protein!  Chicken curry salad.

This is a tasty salad.  We went grocery shopping last night and are overrun with produce.  Not a bad thing.

Not sure if it is a hold over from yesterday’s ride, but I have been kind of hungry today.  I broke a little earlier than normal for a snack of iced coffee and some Lindt chocolate (touch of sea salt).

Good!  I was hoping to make it to dinnertime, but my tummy was growling a couple hours later, so I had some blueberries.

Frustrating work afternoon.  I was doing a 15 minute report (which takes about 3x as long to actually transcribe).  It was an admit for a newborn and the doctor began switching back and forth between he/she for the baby during the report.  There is no way to tell which sex a newborn is, as there is no name given (and that doesn’t always help).  So, I had to send it through with a bunch of discrepancy marks.  Funny how the doctors get irritated at the transcriptionsists like we are supposed to be mind readers. 🙄

I read an interesting article today on Tips for Mastering Long-term Weight loss. Evaluating how many of these I do:

  1. Learn to love exercise – done.
  2. Count calories the right way (quality, not quantity) – Mostly do.
  3. Fill up with fiber (whole grains, fruits, and veggies) – Done
  4. Control carbs – I do fairly well with this.
  5. Downsize your portions – Done
  6. Eat protein and take a multivitamin – Done and done.
  7. Eat dairy – Oh yes, do that for sure.
  8. Weigh yourself carefully.  This actually was confusing, because it said to weigh carefully, but then to use the clothing test.  – I am not weighing myself this month, although I would like to right now.
  9. Use a food diary – I use daily plate.
  10. Have a healthy attitude – I do fairly well at this, but could always improve.

Am I the only one that has trouble with using clothing as a weight barometer?  I find I can wear the same pair of pants with a wide weight range.

I was so hungry for dinner, so I needed something stat.  I had a ginger Altoid to keep from nibbling (this is working really well, btw).

Cheese omelet anyone?  Yum!  With some elderly brussels.

I need to work some more tonight.  This is starting to get hard, I have to say.  Why can’t I get paid (enough) to just blog my little heart out?  😉

Snack of some granola later, I believe, once I finish work.

Lifting Move of the week and biz-zay!

If you haven’t checked out some of the comments on the IE/ME post, you should. They are interesting! I think they really are 2 different approaches to eating.

It was still hot this morning, but not too bad for riding to the gym for my workout.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Barbell squats 3 sets of 8 with 65# bar Lower body
Dumbbell pullover 3 sets of 10 with 25# DB Back
Push ups 3 sets of 10 Chest
Decline sit ups 3 sets of 10 Abs
Upright row 3 sets of 10 with 30# bar Shoulders
Cable squat to row 3 sets with 10at 60# Full body
Bench dips 3 sets of 10 Triceps
Barbell Good Mornings 3 sets of 10 at 55# Lower back and hammies

Strength Training Move of the Week: Upright Row. This exercise is for the shoulders.  You basically just pull the dumbbells or bar up to about your chin.  You want to try to not raise your shoulders up to your ears doing this. Also keep your elbows up and don’t let them drop down or you won’t be working the shoulders.

Please note the lovely tan lines I have from all that biking (yes, I wear gobs of sunscreen).  I really need to work on slowing down my reps.  Note I also figured out how to edit the video so you don’t have to see me turning on the camera and getting into frame!

Then I biked home for breakfast.  Too busy to go bike for the usual bagel on Wednesdays (wahh!).  Of course, we are actually going to be moving bagel day to Thursdays anyway most likely.   I’ll be biking there tomorrow, though, rest assured.

Instead, I had some pumpkin cream of wheat.  Totally craving the pumpkin again, which is weird since it sure doesn’t feel like fall.  Wishful thinking maybe?

I did let the bowl sit for a bit and cool down well.

Started work early because of the amount of stuff to do right now with John gone.  Mid morning hunger hit, and I decided to have some blues!

I also had the Tour on muted while I worked (muted0.  I almost never have the TV on during the day except to watch Jeopardy during lunch, but cannot resist live Tour TV.

Speaking of lunch, I broke for lunch when I was hungry, which ended up being about 20 minutes before I normally break for lunch on a time schedule.  Another cool lunch.  Like yesterday only with blueberries instead of strawberries:

We have worked our way through 3/4 of that big bucket of blueberries from Friday.  Of course, I shared with family, but a good deal ended up in my tummy 😀

I had phone training this afternoon for my new job.  Mostly just how to use their specific platform.  Right before training started, I made an iced latte to drink during it.  This is our little cheap espresso machine:

Mr. Coffee.  It’s functional at least.  This is cooled espresso.  I put some milk and ice in a glass, then slowly pour in the espresso:

That makes the pretty layer.  It’s just to look at for a moment, because I stir it up to drink.   Served with a mini dark chocolate mint cup from the fridge!

I did some work for my new job for a while.  I am limited as to how much I can do because they need to audit everything I do line by line at first, just to make sure all is okay.  I’ll probably be released from QA in a couple days.  Then I went back to the  other job and did more work there.  I started to get really hungry an hour before dinner, so I decided to have a pear:

Cold and refreshing straight from the fridge.  This heat is making me want smaller, more frequent feedings.

Took a break for dinner.  I was not horribly hungry, but I have a busy work night tonight ahead of me still, so it was time to eat.

I was going to have a nice cold salad, but my lettuce decided to get soupy.  Ick.  So, I just had the chicken with some sauteed brussels.

I am keeping up so far, but I have at least 2 more hours of work to do tonight, plus some order packing for the business.  I am going to take a break later for some banana soft serve.  Nana is already in the freezer!

Maybe John will bring me a nice present from Atlantic City for doing all this work 😀

Question: Have you ever worked 2 jobs?