Bionic woman January 10, 2009

What’s up?  How was your Saturday?  Mine has somehow been really, really long, way more than I thought I would be able to stand.  I woke up around 3:30 and got up at 4:15 this morning.  Oy vey.  But, I did look forward to my long morning and productive day.

After I dropped my dad and Liz off at the airport I came home, put on the boob tube, posted for yesterday, brewed some cafe, took down the Christmas tree, and finally ate around 7 I think.  Steel cut oats, almond milk, water, cinnamon, raisins, Barney Butter.

Taking down the Christmas tree was sad 😦  It had been up for like a month, but I always get kinda sad when putting away the ornaments and stuff.

After I ate I can’t remember much til I left for pilates around 9:30.  I was feeling pretty tired…I think I organized a little more and watched TV.  That is so crazy I can’t remember!

Pilates was good, bad, and ugly all at the same time.  I did really well on some moves, and sucked major ass on others.  Since I have done abs the last two days some of the ab work was pretty tough for me in class.  We did a cool new move today that I liked, tho:  a modified helicopter.

After class I was seriously feeling strange from how tired I was.  I chatted with Andrea and her friend after class and they probably thought I was on something! 

Once home I played with Lily and made lunch:  a sundried tomato Flatout, two slices of turkey, one scrambled egg, 1/2 a wedge LCL, and rainbow slaw.  I added a few shakes of Italian herbs to the eggs, but the whole wrap wasn’t as tasty as I expected.  I also had some Stacy’s Pita Chips on the side since I was totally out of fruit, cottage cheese, and other possible sides.

I was soooooo tired after this, and have another memory gap between noon and 1-ish.  I think I was just parked on the couch watching TV and talking with Chris, and between 1 and 2 I tried napping but never quite fell asleep 😐

Eventually I went to the grocery store.  Oh, but first I was too hungry and I finally ate this Luna Nutz Over Chocolate bar I’ve had for awhile.  It was good, but I think I liked the berry almond one better.

I am so happy to be stocked up again on fruit, veggies, and snacks/sides.  I had a major need to buy fruit arise while I was perusing that section, so I ended up with Pink Lady apples, some small pink grapefruits, and bananas.  I look forward to tasting the apples and grapefruit tomorrow.

Once home I unpacked the groceries, cleaned out a few things from the fridge, and prepped dinner items.  I somehow started getting a second wind while doing this, and didn’t feel really tired again until just now (nearly 11:30!  How did I make it this long!!???).  I drank a big glass and a half of this Diet V8 Splash Tropical Blend, too.  I know, it has Splenda in it…but I wanted something tasty without tons of sugar and this did the trick.

Dinner was easy and pretty good, but I keep feeling like something is missing flavor-wise from my stir fries.  Chicken, carrot, broccoli, green pepper, onion, stir fry sauce, red wine vinegar, garlic, and toasted sesame seeds on mine. Oh, and the last bit of brown rice we had.

I started thinking about snacking a few hours later, and here’s sort of how my thought process went:  ‘Hmmm, I want some yogurt, but not just yogurt and banana like I usually have.  Banana and Barney Butter?  Too caloric.  Cereal and banana?  Too plain.  How about a little of all of them put together with a dash of cinnamon.  Okay!’  This worked out to be around 220 cals, I think: 1/4 cup Quaker Oatmeal Squares, 1/4 cup Dannon Light & Fit vanilla (more Splenda!), 1/2 banana, 1 tbsp Barney Butter, dash of cinnamon.

The tastes were good, but I think the banana wasn’t quite ripe enough since the whole mix wasn’t as sweet as I’d hoped.  I really liked the BB, yogurt, and cereal tastes together.

I’m really, really tired now and must finally get some sleep.  This is the first week in a loooong time that I have not had a full night’s sleep any night this week.  Oy vey again.  Hopefully I can pass out now 🙂  I’m excited for yoga tomorrow, esp. since I haven’t been for over a week. 

Ciao, bellas!

My cup runneth out

Woo hoo!  This week flew by for some reason. Can’t believe it is Saturday morning already and I’m loving it.  I got up super early to take my dad and Liz to the airport, and I’m stayin’ up to enjoy a nice long morning!  You may not know this about me:  I like having a long morning when I get up early.  I know I’m totally a night owl usually, but when I get up early I relish in the earliness.

I ran out of like every food I ate yesterday, mostly after I had my portion for the day.  Must do some major restocking today!

Yesterday was quite standard fare in the a.m. and for lunch, but deviated in the p.m.

Breakfast in the a.m. was my ever popular steel cut oats, water, almond milk, raisins, Barney Butter, and cinnamon.  Mmm, mmm, good.  Notice anything different?  I decided I needed to spice up the pic somehow…

That’s the little Mexican ladybug bobblehead that sits on my desk.  She thought the oats smelled great, too 😉

The morning went pretty quickly with the work I was doing, and around 12:30 I was at a stopping point and decided to go for lunch.  Chris was still in a meeting, so I ate at my desk while reading blogs.  Same thing as yesterday, except I ran out of spinach and only had rainbow slaw as the veg in my wrap.

I was in a chatty mood with my office mate, Kristin, and that helped pass the time as I worked.  I really did get a lot done, tho, even tho I was talking. 

Hunger came knocking eventually, so I had a Clif Nectar Cherry Pomegranate bar.  There was a tiny piece of nut shell in it!  Eeeek!  I cannot stress how much I love the simple goodness of these bars since they only have four ingredients, are moist, have nutty chunks, and are 2 full servings of fruit.  They are very sticky, tho, so I always hold them with the wrapper.

After a little last minute frustration at work over an employee not doing her job, we headed home and I began preparing dinner.  I’m totally scared to mention what Chris had to eat…let’s just say it was a stroganoff prepared with meat from Canada from an animal with antlers 😦  I had no interest in eating it, even tho it pretty much looked and smelled like beef.  A client of his brought him the meat and we’ve had it frozen for awhile.  I’m glad to have finally cooked it and be moving on.

My dinner, on the other hand, was vegetarian as it turns out.  I had a Gardenburger Riblet and steamed broccoli sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.  I guess it was more like a dinner snack since it was so lite on the cals.  I knew I was going to work out and didn’t want to feel bogged down.  Yummy!  Must restock on those riblets!

How do you like your broccoli?  Chris loves his steamed until it’s a mushy mess, and I like mine on the al dente side.

My workout was good, and thankfully the gym was not very busy.  A girl was smoking on the doormat to the front entrance (!!! :shocked: ); apparently she doesn’t know the law is to stand at least 10 feet from the door.  Anywho, when I got onto the floor the weights were anywhere but where they were supposed to be, so I spent awhile re-racking what others had scattered about.  Did my good deed for the day 🙂

I then set into a decent upper body workout with mostly free weights.  I’m lovin’ the additional muscle mass I see 😮 My body naturally has a tendency to grow large arm and shoulders, and have a relatively little mid section and hips, so I look kinda Popeye ish sometimes.  He-he.  At one point some creepy asshole was staring at me and smirking while I was doing seated rows.  Ew.

I hit up the Abench, standing side bends, and the ab cruncher machine in an effort to firm up the mid section.  I swear my stomach is fatter than it was!  Ahhhhhhh!  But I do feel smaller and leaner in general.  Oh, the drama. 

Cardio was about 50 minutes of intervals on the elliptical.  I was on there when 9pm rolled around, so I watched about 1/2 an hour of Lipstick Jungle before heading home.  Since when did Joe Bennett go broke?!  Wish I had a DVR.

I hadto clean up the kitchen, but I was also getting very hungry.  No more cottage cheese, fruit, yogurt….and then it struck me…cereal!  Yay!  I like eating cereal but don’t do it very often.  I had Essential 10 with almond milk.  I like the cereal in general, but some of the chai spice pieces almost get stuck in my throat each time I eat it.  I may not go for a repeat on it once I’m done.

Chris was watching “Highlander” (I had never heard of this series before meeting him; have you seen/heard of it?), and I decided it was time to hit the hay.  My sleep has been suffering a bit, and I knew I had to get up at 4 for the trip to the airport. 

Check this out–like the dork I am I set my alarm for 4 pm instead of 4am, but woke up anyway at 3:30-ish b/c I had to pee so bad, and stayed in bed until it seemed like it was after 4.  Low and behold it was 4:15, so I had to get my ass going.  I totally got lucky there.  Now it is about 6:15am and I may disassemble the Christmas tree and do some other house stuff.  Lovin’ my long morning already, even tho I’m dead tired. 

Chris’ parents are coming over Monday night for our Christmas celebration, so expect to see/hear about a lot of cleaning and organizing this weekend.  We’re having pizza (yeah, I know), so no major food prep of any sort, but I just feel like the house is totally dingy and cluttered again.  It is strange…his parents’ house is a cluttered, dirty nightmare, but I still feel obligated to make my house look spic’n’span when they come over.  Gotta set a good example, ya know? 😉 

Tata!  Talk to y’all later.  Have a great Saturday 🙂

Master Recycler, Part Un January 8, 2009

Hello there faithful readers!  There are about 50 of you on average each day now 🙂  Yippee!  I would love it if more of you commented, tho (hint hint!).  Come on out of the woodwork and let me know what’s up in your neck of the woods.  🙂

I was super lazy and tired this morning and didn’t get out of bed until 9am.  Holy shit.  Pretty lame, right?  Eventually I arrived at work and ate my oatmeal there.  Same mix as yesterday, but it didn’t seem quite as flavorful. I think I’m not adding as many raisins, so it hasn’t been as sweet.

My work computer is annoying me big time…got the same “registry altered, possibly by a virus” message on start up today, had a few crash/freeze incidents during the day, and just hope I can do a restore tomorrow and be rid of the shiznit.

I was busy busting out work and dealing with the computer stuff, and didn’t end up eating lunch until about 1:45.  Sundried tomato Flatout with 1/2 a wedge LCL, two slices of turkey, a handful of spinach, a grab of rainbow slaw, and some ground pepper.  I missed the LCL and will be adding that back in more.  That’s a whole little Fuji on the left.

My 3pm meeting ended up lasting until 4:55 somehow…shouldn’t have been that long.  I had to bust ass outta there in order to get home and make dinner before heading to my first Master Recycler class!  I threw a quick and easy meal on:  whole wheat spaghetti and Prego Italian Sausage pasta sauce  with black olives added.  I’m not a fan of Italian sausage–it’s for Chris–but the sauce is good.  I grated some fresh Parmesan on top 🙂

And I was off!  I arrived a few minutes late and was almost blown away by the wind.  We’re having quite the wind storm right now, but not as much rain as was predicted in the city. 

Class was interesting and informative, and I like the leader, Lauren.  Our topics tonight were solid waste and Oregon recycling laws.  I had no idea that our landfill waste is trucked all the way out to Arlington, like 135 miles from Portland–85 trucks per day, with each truck carrying 5-6 tons of garbage.  WOW!   And, Seattle’s waste is brought down to the same landfill! The recovery rate (recovery = reduced, reused, recycled, composted, or used for energy) in the Portland metro area is 55%, and the City of Portland is 64%.  The methane gas gathered over the old St. Johns landfill is used to power the kilns at cement factories locally, among other things.  I borrowed a video called “Affluenza,” which is about the hyper-consumerism that has plagued our country in the last several years.  Hopefully I can watch that tomorrow.  I’ll add some factoids and links to my Three R’s page for y’all to ponder.  Love the details I get to learn!

I got a little hungry during class, and they had Hot Lips pizza!  Wish I had known that and I may have saved myself instead of having pasta.  But, alas, I resisted and ate this great bar from my Secret Santa when I got home:

This bar deserves two thumbs up:  great texture, great taste, organic, vegan, low-glycemic index, all natural, low sodium, good fats…need I say more??  The sunflower seeds are abundant and provide most of the nutty flavor, but there were also walnuts, pumpkin seeds, raisins, rice crispies, and are those peanuts I see in the pic?  Thanks, Santa!  😉

Chris had Billy Joel blasting and was doing at-home karaoke!  He sang a few songs to me; it was sweet 🙂  I took a pic as he read lyrics off of the computer while he sang yet more later on.  That’s my silly man trying not to laugh when I was taking the pic.

I’m sad I missed Top Chef tonight, and I’ll have to try to catch it on reruns for the rest of the season.  I don’t have the patience to watch it online.  Oh well, at least I’m missing it for a great cause 🙂

Hope you all had a great Wednesday!