Thanks for reading the AIM posts and leaving feedback.  It’s always nice to hear the different opinions on what we write.  I  loved this comment from Kathy that says

Maintenance does not equal stasis!

I think that nails it pretty much, don’t you?

I can’t believe the week is half over already.  Being busy helps with that, but sometimes I am thinking a day behind.  Part of that is from work because I am almost always dating files from the day previous, so I start to think it is that day. The other part of that is just me 😀

I did remember it was Wednesday when I woke up, which is Bagel Day!  It’s embarrassing that the person behind the counter had sliced  a wheat bagel and put it in the toaster when she saw us walk in.  😳   Guess I had better not ever change it up.

Today turned out to be quite a nice day weather wise. At this time of year, a nice day usually precedes cold weather or rain, so we will have to see what tomorrow brings.  I knew I could get out for a ride today, though! 

First was lunch.  We are stocked up on food prep this week. I did crockpot red beans on Monday, which we have been eating the last couple days.  John made a wonderful clam chowder on Sunday which we finished up at lunch.

Yummers!

I worked a bit more and headed out for my ride. First time I was able to get out since Saturday.  It was 58, which is a nice temp. Not too cold, all though it was pretty breezy out.  The first part of the ride was very fast with a tail wind. The second part was a bit tougher.  I have my usual routes I ride depending on how many miles I want around the neighborhoods and today I wanted about 9 miles.  That means road/path/road/path/road. 

Loving the ride!

And yay for Pixie hairs on my gloves. 🙄

Check out my mileage.

Shade under 45 miles to go.  Too bad I couldn’t get a really nice Saturday and I would have that done in one fell swoop. I think I am just going to have to nibble it out for the next couple of weeks.  With shorter days, work and cold weather – it really makes it hard to keep riding.  Looking at temps in the 30s next week. Brrr….

John made my latte after I got home. He had made a pumpkin spice syrup that he drizzled on top. I am a lucky lady.  Another thumb’s up!

I needed that latte to keep working the rest of the day.

My brain was fried after work. Some days of work are easy and some days make my brain tired.  Today was one of those days. So, I just made a PB &J sandwich for dinner. 

Striking out today on the 2 different veggies a day today. Unless you want to count the celery and onion in my soup, which I won’t (even though I want to).

I hope to get semi caught up on blog reading tonight. I am behind! But, first going out for coffee with my hubby because you just can’t have enough coffee in a day (it will be decaf, don’t worry).  We love to do lots of talking and planning when we have coffee, too. 😀

It was a good weekend.  We didn’t get in as much biking as we would have liked, but we did get in a nice ride.  I also took more butterfly pictures. As if you didn’t see enough from Friday’s post!  Today the monarch was sunning on the sedum.

My little Olympus does a good job. This was taken on super macro setting and I was about 4 inches away from him.  Some day I want a DSLR, but with the other projects going on, that will have to wait.

Saturday ended up with rain and quite humid. after getting in a 4 mile walk before the rain came,  we took the opportunity to do some window shopping and home improvement planning over coffee.  John is in the market for new desk and I am looking for some type of storage cabinet for the bathroom.  I am hoping to find something and reclaim it or refinish it.  We stopped at a couple antique and new furniture stores.

This store has some fun stuff.  Look at all these old prams!

They had some bikes, too, which would be fun to stick in the garden, but I need to find a beat up one for next to no money and not one sold in a store if I am going to shove it in the dirt 

I didn’t find anything I wanted, but John has a list of several different desks to think about from a couple different stores.

We are going to be putting laminate in the downstairs of our house.  We did the upstairs after we moved in and now we are ready to do the downstairs.  John paid for the driveway and I am going to shell out the funds for the flooring.  We have it down to 2:

The cherry one is nice, but the color doesn’t go as well with all of our stuff, so I think we we go with the lighter oak.  I’ll be glad to get rid of this berber carpet! Hopefully we will get this started by the end of August. We have 3 rooms to do (and a piano to move… eeek!! ). Hopefully we can have it finished by the time we do our holiday dinner.  😀  I really have the home improvement bug again.

Sunday we decided to squeak in our ride in the morning. There was forecast for rain showers in the afternoon (which never happened), so we wanted to get it in early.  It was a cloudy morning.  First stop Coffee Planet.

This is about 6 miles from home.

I guess they were all decked out for the Olympics.  They also had free little pins for everybody.  Not sure what that was about, but they were little butterflies, so I had to have one and put it on my bike bag.

After breakfast, we decided to swing up to the lake.  I was feeling slow.  I have reduced the pressure in my tires and I think that was just making me too slow. I am going to go back to the 28 mm tires so I can pump them up more.  Here was a stop along the way at about mile 11 or so.  We just came down a hill after some climbs and my tummy was complaining about doing that when full.

Don’t you like how the telephone poles are right in the middle of the bike path?  Not sure who designed that or what they were thinking.

Mile 15 and Lake George!

This sign is of a photo from 1912 when a train used to come right up next to the lake and drop off the wealthy people for their vacations 😀  Now it is just a road.

I have ridden on at least 3 of the tour boats on Lake George.  That one in this picture is the Lac du Saint Sacrement and the one we had our anniversary brunch on last year.

The lake was not super busy because it was somewhat early.

It was a little hazy from humidity today.  We didn’t stay long at the lake, just a bit of rest and then we headed back.  Now the path was getting busy with a lot of people.  Tons of bikers.  When you leave the lake, there is a 2 mile climb back up.  Right near the top, my chain fell off.  Ugh.  At least I didn’t fall over, but I was all ramped up to get to the top!

At the top, you end up by Magic Forest, which is a kid’s amusement park.  Sorta cheesy.

That’s just in the parking lot, too.

I never knew Mighty Mouse rode an elephant, but there you go!

It was a fairly uneventful ride home and we didn’t stop the rest of the way home.

I spy a new driveway in the background!!!!  

Almost 31 miles done by noon  Short ride, but lots of hills.

No yogurt during the ride, but we did go out for it later  😉

Coconut lime yogurt with toasted coconut!  One of my faves.

Yes, I think I can make a new verb called ‘bageling.’ That is the act of going to and having a bagel!  As per usual on Wednesday mornings.  Yesterday’s rain made it a very foggy morning for riding. I don’t love riding in the fog becuase I don’t trust drivers very much (which is a good thing because it keeps me alert). It’s definitely feeling like fall around here now – at least in the mornings.  We headed out to North Country Cafe where I had a wheat bagel:

With some caramel apple coffee! New flavor.  I don’t sweeten my coffee, so sometimes it is odd to have a flavored coffee and not taste anything sweet.

Had a nice view from the window.

The building across the street was torn down and now a new bank building is going up in its place. It is going to be a long process because the whole street itself will be redone as well.

We then headed on home.  12 miles round trip for breakfast! I was just thinking how much more I enjoyed the biking than the riding. Even when there are poopy drivers and flat tires.  I really am this:

(Shelley, I found one! :D) I may have to get myself one of these shirts. Thanks for all the pep talk on my running feelings. I think a lot of it confirmed that I will likely end running all together and just do what I really love to do.  What is that saying about insanity being when you do the same thing over and over again with the same result? I may be a little on the crazy side, but it is a good kind of crazy. I’d like to keep it that way.

Lots and lots of work to do today. It’s been busy lately, which is always good in our industry. I stopped for a quick lunch:

This is ricotta cheese mixed with a little honey and some whey protein isolate on top of blueberry sauce and some toasted pecans. It was a warm lunch, even though it looks cool.  Next time I would have more ricotta.

Today was wonderful payday, too, so I hopped on the bike for another 3 miles to go to the bank and back.  It’s nice that it is so close. Plus it was a nice activity break, although I was already a bit behind where I like to be at this time of day (that seems to be the Wednesday norm at any rate). Lattes upon return.  This is in front of my last plumeria – which didn’t bloom this year.

In my effort to work on September goals, I made another new to me recipe tonight for dinner. It’s called Best Captain’s Chicken from a WW cookbook and I will post the recipe tomorrow (hope that is kosher).  It didn’t take too long and turned out good!

It has chicken, apples, onions, peppers, ginger, cinnamon, curry powder and raisins in it.  While that sounds strange, it was very good. We both really liked it a lot.  Kind of a cross between a soup and stew (stoup).

There also has been some snacking on this:

Several handfuls of cashews.  These are starting to get in danger zone for me.

Well, I must run. John is off for poker and I am off for some socializing of my own!