Wednesday wonders January 21, 2009

Even though I can’t get enough sleep to save myself, I had a great day today.  I woke up a little cranky, but that dissipated by the time I started working around 8:30 🙂

I had a bowl of oats this morning;  I somehow remembered to prep them b/c I knew I wouldn’t have time to eat a bowl of cereal at home.  I snarfed them down while finishing my meeting prep for my 9am conference call:

After reading the many Barney Butter reviews out there, and talking with fellow consumers, I somehow think there is a consistency issue in the production of the stuff.  Some say the chunky is like all chunks and no butter, some say it is sweet, and I say it is a little salty.  I like the stuff, but I haven’t had any other AB but store ground, which wasn’t so hot, esp. compared to BB.  Oh well, just a thought.

I worked for about 4 hours and broke for lunch.  Same thing as yesterday, but with a few spoonfuls of cc.

It was a colleague’s birthday today, and his sister brought in these bad boys:

They were calling my name all afternoon, but I resisted the urge by eating the rest of my apple and working.

Before leaving work I had a few quick bites of cc b/c I was getting hungry.

I made whole wheat spaghetti with Prego Italian Sausage sauce for dinner (fancy, I know), and forgot to take a pic.  I also added some canned Parmesan on top.

I did a little Master Recycler related reading, and then headed off to the class around 6.  Tonight’s topics were e-cycling (electronic waste) and composting.  Yay!

E-cycling is a huge issue since computers, TVs, and other electronics have a lot of metals that are big contaminants if they get into ground water or are incinerated and get into the air.  The average CRT or TV has 4-6 POUNDS of lead in it!  Holy shit!  I had no idea it was that great.  Another great fact was that 1 ton of e-waste has more gold than 17 tons of gold ore.  Whoa, new meaning to the phrase “gold mine.” 

Composting has been on my mind, and I think I’m going to set up a bin/area in the next few weeks.  Our yard has been abused by someone who shall remain nameless with various pesticides, our soil sucks, and I hate throwing away the food waste and yard debris we produce.  Organic waste breaking down in a landfill will produce methane, but in a compost bin/with oxygen it will not.

I also learned about worm bins, and how easy they are to set up and maintain.  Great for people without much/any yard, with a lot of food scraps, or those who don’t want to deal with composting outside.  Here’s a bin the size of an average curbside recycling bin. 

Class let out a little early, and I realized I wanted a snack when I got home.  I had one serving of PB Puffins and almond milk.  🙂

Yummy.

Top Chef just came on (which I usually miss b/c of the timing of my MR class), so I’m gonna watch this and hit the hay, yo!

Hope your Wednesday was merry 🙂

Quick and sick, yo! January 20, 2009

What is up with the tummy lately?  I think my eats after working out have not made the tum happy the last two days.  I was absent last night due to fending off a huge urge to give my dinner back from whence it came.  Bleh!

Anyhow, it seems I’ve had a trend of two day posts lately.  I’d rather be posting each day…sorry bout that!

MONDAY

Breakfast was Barbara’s Shredded Oats with 1/2 a banana and almond milk.  I ate it quickly while getting Lily and food ready for the day.

I was SOOOOO tired and felt like I was semi comatose all day.  It sucked.

Lunch time rolled around eventually, and I had a whole wheat tortilla with sliced turkey, 1/2 a wedge LCL, spinach, broc slaw, and pepper.  The Braeburn apple was not pithy!  Yay!  I also had some of the pita chips.

This didn’t stick with me for very long, and I went for some CC and pita chips a little later.

Because both of us were so damn tired, Chris and I left work early, like around 3:45 or 4.  I figured a good workout would help wake me up a little, so I hit the gym and did legs, abs, and 40 minutes of cardio.  I did 20 minutes on the elliptical and then proceeded to wait for what seemed like forever for a stair mill.  There were 3 people that had been on there more than 20 minutes, but they seemed oblivious to the rule that you get off after 20 minutes if someone is waiting.  Poo on them!  Finally a guy got off and I climbed on for 20 sweaty, glorious minutes.

On the way home I tried to come up with a creative chicken dinner; I did not want the typical, boring grilled chicken with green beans and mashed potatoes 😐 I ended up thinking of sauteed chicken with onions and stewed tomatoes, so I whipped it up, along with green beans and leftover mashed potatoes.  😐 I didn’t get very far from the usual boring meal, eh?

Tasted great, but I ate too much and then my tummy started hurting pretty badly.  Chris didn’t have any discomfort, and about a half hour later it clicked that maybe I had too much onion.  My tum is sensitive to onion, especially onion that’s not cooked fully, so I think that was to blame.

I had some Tums, then an Alka Seltzer, and went to bed early.  My stomach did feel mostly better before I went to bed, thankfully.

TUESDAY

Waking up today was really hard, even tho I got a full night’s sleep.  I listened to some of Obama’s inauguration while getting ready, and I’m excited for this new administration!! 

While outside playing with Lily I ate my breakfast: a bowl of PB Puffins, 1/2 a banana, and almond milk.  My hands were SO cold while holding the bowl out there!  Brrrrr.

Off to work we went, and I dove into work.  Not very remarkable I suppose.  Eventually I had lunch, which was the same as yesterday, exactly.

The afternoon went quickly, and was rather mediocre.  I found out that my compliance officer thought I gave tax advice (totally not my intent, and a HUGE no-no for us financial planners), so I got a bit stressed out.  Ah!

I had the rest of my apple sometime this afternoon.

Chris wanted to visit Si Senor for dinner, so we left around 5 for that.  I had a big Diet Coke (gasp!), one chicken taco, and one beef taco.  Yup, there are tacos under that pile of lettuce.

After we got home I headed to the gym for upper body, abs, and cardio.  Today I did 20m on the stair mill, and then 25m on the elliptical.  The weight floor was SO busy tonight, even busier than yesterday.

I needed a little snack after I got home, so after looking around I decided on 1/2 a banana with a tbsp of almond butter.

Now I’m off to read up on recycling goodness for my class tomorrow night.  Some great facts are in there. Like that in the Portland metro area 20 TONS of inappropriate material is placed in curbside recycling bins every day.  Whoa!  That costs our local recyclers a lot of money, and means some recyclable materials may end up getting contaminated or thrown away 😦  Study your collector’s rules and stick with them as much as you can!  Putting something recyclable in that they don’t collect (i.e. wrong size of tub, frozen food boxes, etc.) clogs up the system and means the collector must pay to dispose of them.

Off I go, have a great one 🙂

Yay, Friday is over! January 17, 2009

Hi everyone.  Sorry I didn’t post last night…my day was long and I was not in a posting mood when I got home for working out at 11:30 last night :shocked:

Hmmmm…let me rewind a bit to yesterday morning. 

Quaker Oatmeal Squares, half a banana, and lots of almond milk.  I really like the taste and texture of these squares a lot 🙂  The banana was a little too ripe for me…

Off to work, a busy morning I didn’t expect, and an uncomfortable caffeine/endorphin buzz.  Bleh.  I ate to take a break and try to wind down so I could feel more relaxed while preparing for my afternoon client meeting and doing other stuff.  I have a tendency to work myself up sometimes, but I’m usually mostly relaxed.

Lunch was a leftover stuffed half pepper and half an apple.  Yummy!  That was my last apple 😦

The afternoon went quickly, and I was happily ready when my 5 o’clock called and asked if we could meet at 4, and then showed up at 3:30.  My meeting was good and quick, and I think it was afterward that I had this snack: the rest of my Pink Lady, and a cup of Dannon Light n Fit vanilla with 1/2 a banana and too much cinnamon.

We worked more and then Chris told me Maria was calling his name.  Eventually we got to Fajitas and couldn’t figure out what to order…a taco? Taco salad? Burrito?  We finally decided to split Carnitas de Pollo, and it was so yummy!  I’d never had it before, but it is Chris’ favorite.  Pedro also made us our two customary Casuelas, but I didn’t have much b/c I wanted to work out. 

After dinner I eventually got to the gym, like at frickin’ 10pm 😐  I busted out a full upper body workout while rockin’ Limp Bizkit and watching two goons make fools of themselves.  Same goons from Tuesday night lifting heavy weights like an inch and making a spectacle of it.  I moved on to abs and then a half an hour of stair mill intervals for some sweaty glory.  I’m so happy I can knock out a half hour on that bad boy.  Andrea, that’s so funny you thought of Erin and I on the mill while doing your intervals the other day!  I thought of you while on the mill last night 🙂

I got home at 11:30 like I mentioned, and was in a bit of a funk.  After showering and taking care of the LB I just went to bed to read some for my MR course.  I didn’t end up falling asleep until 1:30 tho!  Bad me!  I read and watched Graham Norton and You Are What You Eat on BBC America.  Have you watched the latter show?  It is kinda gross to see what the people eat but pretty informative health wise.

~~~~~~~~

Today (Friday) was good, fast, and busy.  I had another bowl of the oatmeal squares for breakfast, but I was out of fruit completely and ate them with almond milk only.  Still yummy 🙂

Chris wanted to grab a coffee on the way into work (no coffee service on Fridays and the coffee the staff bought to make sucks–Folgers).  We had a coupon for McDonald’s, so I had a large sugar free vanilla nonfat latte.  Too much vanilla, but not too bad.

Because of my meeting schedule I didn’t end up eating lunch until about 2:30.  Yikes!  My lack of fruit was sad, but everything tasted really good today, especially the wrap for some reason.

The afternoon zipped by, and eventually we headed out around 5:30.  I knew dinner would be grilled chicken and yukon mashers, but I was struggling with the other component.  I didn’t just want the same old boring plate with canned green beans, and when I got home I saw my little friend the butternut squash!  Yay, something to mix it up a bit!

I tried squash fries….excellent and fun!  First I nuked the squash for 5 minutes and kept thinking I may need to duck and cover.  Even tho I stabbed the little guy a few times, he was still hissing and actually rolling around a little in there.  I cut him in half, scooped out the seeds, and then used my mandolin to cut him into fries.

The fries were coated with some fake Pam and jerk seasoning, then baked at 350 (couldn’t remember Erin’s preferred temp) for about 25 minutes, stirred once.  So tasty!  Chris was skeptical at first, but tried some and thought they were just okay.  Whateva, more for me!

Chris and I went to workout, which was just a half hour on the elliptical doing semi-hard intervals.  After I got home I did a little MR reading (actually not in the book pictured), and my tummy rumbled.

I wasn’t sure what to eat, and ended up just eating a tbsp of Barney Butter all alone.  Chris was annoyed watching me eat the thing for 5 minutes, it was funny.  Finally he was like, “just eat it already!”  Hahahaha, you wish.  Gotta savor the flavor, biotch! 😉

Writing my post always takes me like an hour, it is crazy.  How about you? I don’t know where the time goes.  I must go to bed so I can get up early for my MR field trip.  I feel like I’m in school again with the classes, field trips, teaching others, and “homework.”  LOL. 

Hope you had a good week and are looking forward to an even better weekend 🙂  Ciao.

MAJOR P.S.: I think I’ve made more progress on the weight loss/muscle build front!  I’ve gotten more comments, clothes are fitting looser yet, and the scales, although inaccurate, are weighing me consistently lower.  Fuck yeah! I think I’ll go through my closet this weekend and see if I can fit back into anything, esp. work clothes.