Archive for July 2012

Maniacal Monday #12

So much has happened over the last few days, and so much of it is stuff that I am just not going to blog about. At least not yet. It is a pretty safe bet that I will eventually. On the other hand, I have a few things I do want to talk about, if just briefly.

1. I have lost 32 pounds so far, and 8 since starting the Marathon Weight Loss Challenge. Whether or not I lose the remaining 18.2 pounds is not so important to me as losing what remains of my spare tire. πŸ˜‰

2. I took last week off to heal my knee. It tried to hurt as I ran last night, but it calmed down after a mile. Both knees were hurting before I got to the half mile point. I only did 2 miles, and managed a consistent pace.

3. I ate vegan all weekend, but I don’t think I am going to be overly strict about it. For instance, I will still eat honey. I also don’t think I can resist another bison burger if I happen to be in Southern Pines. I tell you, though, it was hard cooking steaks for my family, and not eating one.

4. The hubby let the inside dogs eat leftover fried potatoes. Evie puked for 2 days. :-/

5. I take back envying stay at home moms. Seriously, if their days are like my Saturdays, on the go non-stop, and getting very little accomplished, but totally worn out from all the nothing-to-show-for-it work, I don’t know. I mean, I did do 3 loads of laundry, but only 2 of the 3 made it out of the dryer. I managed to cook the hubster a meal for dinner but that’s only because I found a pack of instant potatoes in the cabinet. Otherwise, it was just steak. Chuck. I can’t afford ribeye for the non-discriminating cow-eaters. πŸ˜‰ I did get all the dishes washed…

6. Just realized that I was quite vocal in sunday school yesterday. Huh. Interesting.

7. Is totally not liking this romaine lettuce I bought. :-/ Had a similar dislike with baby swiss chard over the weekend.

That’s all I got for now, so I will leave you with this because it’s stuck in my head….

And then came the final blow

I really, really hate having to eat my words. I seem to be doing that on a regular basis lately. Just when I think I have my diet under control, I find out that I don’t. 3 or 4 years ago, my doctor “prescribed” a book for me to read: Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, MD. Well, I’ve been reading it for the past 2 or 3 weeks, and am going to have to eat the words, “I can’t go vegetarian, and sure can’t go vegan. Why? Because I am seriously considering going vegan…and raw…like Opal.

I have already been heading that direction anyway, but I read enough about eating meat and its effect on hormone levels (even grass-fed, organic) to first cut way back, with the ultimate intention of cutting all animal completely. And yes, I am still wearing my “I &#9829 BACON” lanyard. The changes I have made so far have created the same response my body did last year when I went starch (and gluten) free, only without the withdrawls. haha! But yeah, cheese is BAD to be so yummy…

Whenever I finish the book, I will (maybe) write up a full review with quotes that were the mind changers for me.

Beautiful Blogger

Molly nominated me for this last week, and I feel so honored and thankful to her as a friend. πŸ™‚

**Obligatory Rules**

Copy the Beautiful Blogger Award logo and place it in your post.

Thank the person who nominated you and link back to their blog.

Tell 7 things about yourself.

Nominate 7 other bloggers for their own Beautiful Blogger Award, and comment on their blogs to let them know.

So here’s my 7 things:

1. This isn’t really new, but I don’t like peanuts or peanut butter.

2. I was a band geek in high school because I sucked at basketball and tennis, refused to run track (haha! That’s come back to bite me.), but was determined to have a letter jacket….which I still have…

3. Was able at one time to quote the movies The Wizard of Oz & Steel Magnolias by heart from beginning to end. I can still heavily quote them.

4. Slept through 2 tornadoes when I was a kid. This is significant because I had the same type of meltdowns over the possibility of a tornado as I did over spiders.

5. I remember my school closing after this Titan II missle explosion, and if memory serves me correctly, it was because our school was being used as an evacuation shelter. The Damascus silo was in the next county, but there were 3 in my county, the closest one being less than 3 miles away from our house, as the crow flies. That would be considered in the ground zero range, just fyi. And yes, I knew that growing up, and knew that it was a reasonable assumption that the Soviet Union had a matching ICBM for each of ours, targeted at ours.

6. Made it to 6th place in the county spelling bee in 1983. I misspelled consternation. I haven’t since. πŸ˜‰

7. Went through 3 different majors in college, and had 3 different minors with the second major. First and last majors did no require a minor, but I could have gotten a minor in management with my final major if I had taken just one more management course (personnel management).

    1st major – Pre-Pharmacy. Turned out I hated biology and wasn’t too excited with chemistry.
    2nd major – Computer Science. Assembly language and discrete math killed me. Only 2 F’s that I left on my transcript.

      1st minor – Math. I dropped Calculus III after the first day, and Abstract Algebra the day of the 1st test…and changed minors.
      2nd minor – Industrial Technology. This was fun, but I wasn’t going to have enough upper level credits.
      3rd minor – Business Administration. I only got as far as the basics – Accounting & Economics – before I changed majors.

    3rd major – Industrial Technology. Except for the management aspect, it was like shop class only college level.

Here’s my 7 nominations, in no order, and without holding them to having to participate knowing that they are all busy. πŸ™‚

Jess

Opal

Karyn

Petra

Sarah

Diane and Mel (whose employer won’t let her have a personal blog). They have blogged separately and together off an on, so I list them together due to the parenthetical statement after Mel’s name.

Teeni

Trisha

Ok, I know that is more than 7. I couldn’t narrow it to just 7. Sorry. Seriously, I almost added more. πŸ˜‰

“You gotta know when to hold ’em…”

I’ve had problems with my knees since junior high, following the year that I grew 5 inches really fast. They may or may not be related, but I had sporadic pain for about 2 years following that growth spurt. After being pain free for several years, I had a couple of accidents in the Air Force, one for each knee, and had issues with the left one for a few years. That one eventually landed me in physical therapy where they determined there was too much play in patella, and gave me an exercise plan to strengthen the muscle around my knee. It helped, but a long walk would still end in pain on the inside of my knee. But then I got fat, and that quit happening…oddly. πŸ˜‰

So, with that background, a couple of weeks ago, I ran 4.5 miles – the longest I’ve run ever. Either that night or next day, I noticed a pain in my left knee on the outside, especially walking downstairs. But it cleared up after a couple of days, and I had no problem with it until the bug dance run. It hasn’t hurt while running since then, but has hurt either soon after or up to a day later. It is probably iliotibial band syndrome, and so I am taking a break from running this week to rest and heal. It could be the slant of the road, the hills (I keep saying hills are killing me), or it could be from rolling my ankle a couple times when I have to run on the shoulder because of traffic. But whatever the cause, I’ll be biking this week instead of running.

I ran the Patriot 5K 4th of July. I was joined by 4 other Tribe members, each of whom smoked me. lol But I expected to be smoked, and my goal was not to keep up with them, but to run the entire 5K without walking. I have to admit, I was ready to quit before I got off campus and onto the street. It was terribly demoralizing to get passed by runners with strollers. And I was totally dreading the first turn around because I knew it was uphill almost the whole way to the second turn around. But I got a little morale boost after the first turnaround because while I was running really slow, there was a butt-ton of people ahead of me walking. But then as I passed where the route went on/off campus, I saw the first 2 runners coming in. I looked at my watch and it was just over 15 min. Really?!?! Who runs a 5k in 16 minutes?!?! Well, 16-17 year old kids on the track team, that’s who. Anyway, I finally made it to the second turn around, and by the time I passed the roundabout and turned back onto campus, I felt like I was booking it. The reflux hit right before the final turn before the finish and I was sure I would puke, but I managed not to, and ran my best 5K to date: chip time was 35:58. My watch time was 36:10, and the gun time was 36:17. I didn’t come in last, except among the Tribe members, but like I said, that was expected because they run fast. πŸ™‚

And for today’s earworm:

Maniacal Monday #11

1. So, I am injured. I’ll elaborate tomorrow.

2. I ran the Patriot 5K last Wednesday. That will be a separate post.

3. Lost .4 pounds over the past week as part of the Marathon Weight Loss Challenge. .4 pounds better than no pounds and certainly better than a gain. But, I’m about to transition to a different way of eating, which, again, will be a separate post. And I am down a trouser size. πŸ™‚

4. My daughter cut her own hair Friday night, and cut it really short. She did a really good job, and it looks good on her.

5. I walked into the office Friday morning, and one of my co-workers had brought in 2 guitars…with the intent of making me play one of them. Yes, I did, and I was a nervous wreck. lol

6. I am so ready for a break from this heat!

7. FEMALE STUFF ALERT So that countup I was doing? 29 days. I had a 29 day period. The entire month of June minus the 3oth. That should be the entire cycle length not just one period. Why, yes. I am ready for a hysterectomy. πŸ˜‰ END FEMALE STUFF

8. I have 2 or 3 drafts from last week I need to finish. One in particular since Molly tagged me.

9. Need to do some work on my Google Reader and take out the stuff I’m not really reading.

10. Have a couple of plants that need planting. I just don’t seem to have the required motivation to actually do it.

I won’t apologize for this:

“We can dance if we want to…”

I set out a little late for my run last night. I thought it was another 3 miler, but turns out it was 4 miles. You want to know a good motivation for pushing yourself? Start at 8pm and try to do 4 miles before dark. Anyway, I picked a different route than Saturday morning’s 4 miler because I hadn’t done the loop in a while, and I wanted to work in more uphill since half of tomorrow’s 5k is uphill. I finished the first mile in under 11 min, but there was too much uphill to maintain that pace and so the next mile was concentrating on breathing and continuing to run. Shortly after I finished the second mile, and was heading downhill, something bit or stung me. It felt about like a sweat bee, but then I looked down at my calf, and nearly soiled myself at the size of the bug.

Now before I continue, I’m really not a girl about bugs. With the exception of stinging and biting bugs, they are just an annoyance. But when it is big and flies fast and looks like a hornet, I turn into a girl. I didn’t scream, and I don’t think I let the f-bomb fly, but I did the bug dance trying to keep the thing from perching on my calves and either biting or stinging. I kid you not, I think that thing was chasing me. Of course with that “dance” I was doing in the road, I wasn’t running though I got a lot of upper body movement trying to swat at it. This whole act went on for a quarter mile before I finally hit it hard enough to stun it so I could kill it. I had to step on the thing 3 times before it quit moving, too!

With the bug dead, I continued walking and tried to get myself back in the game while pondering whether or not to continue attempting the 4 miles since I had initially abandoned the addition to the loop route to give me 4 miles instead of 3.4. By the time I made it up the hill I had only decided to attempt running again. Well, attempt was all it was because the bug dance tweaked my knee which has been sensitive since last week’s 4.5 miler. But I figured I could go ahead and finish walking 4 miles anyway, and just take a left onto my road and go around the corner and then back to the house. I wasn’t past the first house before another one attacked me, albeit a smaller one. That’s when I dropped the f-bomb and turned towards the house. That bug didn’t follow me either…weirdly.

This is what I think the bug was. Harmless, yes, but still too big to ride on my sweaty calves.

This is to attempt to make up for Safety Dance.

Be glad I didn’t pick the Jagger/Bowie remake…or even the Van Halen remake… πŸ˜‰

And I am a complete girl over spiders. Size is irrelevant.

Maniacal Monday #10

I intended to write a post on Friday, but I didn’t get any farther than starting a draft containing nothing but a YouTube video. I had a cup of coffee that afternoon, which turned out to be a mistake. I need to either get back on coffee full time, or quit it altogether. Or, since I just reloaded my Starbucks card, get tea.

Saturday was a pretty good day, despite the heat. I got up early to run because I knew it would be too hot anytime later, and ran my best time since basic training. The hubster and I went to Southern Pines so I could visually check out the 5k route (which will be partially uphill – ugh!), and since were were there and Petra had so highly recommended it, we stopped and got bison burgers from Nature’s Own. Her description didn’t do justice to the taste, though it turns out she had censored her description. πŸ˜‰ After we got back home we did some ac swapping around because the unit in our br just wasn’t keeping it cool, and my office and Chad’s br were ovens. Before the hubby finally got to go to bed (he works nights), we had our best talk ever, while Jamie waited impatiently for me to take her out for sushi. I got a really good watermelon at HT, and we went to Dick’s to get Jamie some obnoxiously loud knee-high socks.

Sunday’s are always so busy…for me. It’s ok, it’s just not a restful day which is why I hate Mondays so bad. Monday is my crash day, but unfortunately, I still have to work. Anyway, we had a deacon ordination service, which I had never seen. I was in the nursery when Joe was ordained, and never ever saw a single one in any of the churches I grew up in. It was really cool to be a part of it.

Then Petra drew me into another Fb wall post “controversy.” When I first read the exchange, I was speechless. But, of course, not for long and I inserted my 2&#162, and it eventually went downhill before her husband put the matter to rest quite well. I may or may not blog about it this week. Last night I was fired up and ready, but today…not so much. I’d rather take a nap, which won’t happen because…

…I left my badge & cac at home this morning, and did not realize it until I was 10 min from work. So instead of a 45min to an hour drive in, I had a 2.5 hour drive because, yes, I went back home to get them.