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.

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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.

A socially responsible day January 14, 2009

I did not sleep well last night 😦  I woke up a lot for various reasons, but at least after I got up I didn’t feel tired at all today.

I wolfed down my oats as I prepped lunch.  That was the last of my oats until I go to the store, so a change is in order tomorrow.  I had a bigger than usual bowl of steel cut oats with more raisins than normal, Barney Butter, almond milk, water, and cinnamon.  I figured out that this cinnamon tastes almost floral; guess that’s what I get for buying the cheap stuff 😦

(side bar:  FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.  When I insert pics it deletes a paragraph!  Ahhhh.  Just had to insert all pics and write afterward.  WordPress, fix this shit!)

I started my day with a rep from Calvert Investments, one of the oldest and largest socially responsible fund companies in the world.  It dawned on me that I should probably put my money where my mouth is and support socially reponsible companies around the world.  Duh!  I like their new approach, too, called the SAGE Strategies, that strive to push currently non-socially responsible companies to become more socially reponsible. 

My lunch was the same as yesterday.  I left 1/2 of the apple, a few chips, and most of the cc.

The afternoon went quickly, and I think I finally solved the damn computer problem!!  Yayayayayaya!  Finally. I read more data on the item McAfee kept removing (it was called StealthMBR!rootkit), found out it was embedded in my registry, that I was not letting the fix stick b/c I kept undoing the changes at startup, blah blah blah, I think it is fixed now.  Microsoft Security Center was helpful, as that’s where I learned what the program was and how it could have affected me.  Turns out it was a nasty bug that could potentially steal info off of my computer, passwords, have remote control, etc.  Not kosher!  But, supposedly Microsoft doesn’t think it has hurt anyone yet.

Anywho.  Eventually I ate my last two chips, and not too long after had two pieces of taffy, one peppermint and one butter.

We left work a little early so I could prepare dinner before heading to Master Recycler class.  I made stuffed peppers, and found a way to save water while doing it–nuke the peppers instead of boil them!  I totally forgot the rice until the last minute and ended up nuking it until par-cooked.  Thankfully it did end up cooking mostly while in the oven. 

All in all, this recipe was: 3 green bell peppers halved lengthwise & nuked 5 minutes, 1lb 93% lean ground beef sauteed with 1/2 a chopped onion, I then stirred in 1 can tomatoes with green chiles, 1/2 can tomato sauce, Nature’s Seasoning, Italian herbs, Jerk seasoning and ~1 cup cooked brown rice, then stuffed the peppers, poured a little more tomato sauce on top, and added a little shredded medium cheddar after baking.  I baked them for about 30 minutes, and all was well! I  also had the rest of my apple from lunch since I only had one portion of pepper.

Tonight’s MR class was about the recycling process and curbside recycling.  Not much new stuff, but some great tidbits.  I know I said I’d post under my new page, but I’ve been bad about doing that.  Sorry….I’ll get there 😉

Around 8:30 we had a break, and I had a little snack of 2 wedges pita bread, ~2 T hummus, 2 small celery sticks, 2 baby carrots, and 1/2 of a small slice of poppyseed bread.  Good stuff!

During class we passed around this pie plate showing what usually happens to glass at a paper mill:

Not pretty, eh?  The glass hurts their machines, and then gets bound up with paper fibers and staples/paper clips, which then cannot be sorted out and scrapped.  That’s one ugly mess!  Here in the Portland area we recycle glass separately from our big bin of mixed stuff, and that reduces the glass contamination drastically.  Paper mills still get tons of glass mixed in, tho, so until our population is more diligent it will still be a problem.

Well, I’m tired, it’s 11:15, and I think I’ll go to bed a little earlier than I have lately. Tomorrow will be a bit long again, and no oats to start me off!  What will I ever do?

Busy bitch

Today was pretty busy and went by really quickly.  But all in all, it was good and much better than yesterday 🙂

I woke up around 8 and finally got up at 8:30.  I had my oats while making lunch for Chris and I, and was kind of sad to wolf them down in between tasks.  I like the nut butter in my oats, but I may have to do something a bit different to kick things up.  I saw Erin got some figs, and remembered that I really liked dried figs in my oatmeal.  Mental note to get figs when I run out of raisins…

I’m like Andrea and prefer my oats on the dry side, and these were a tad too mushy for me since I added some water when they were done.

My morning was a bit frustrating b/c of client issues and computer issues, but I think I started making some progress on the computer front.  Eventually I ate lunch with Chris around 12:30, but wasn’t that hungry.  My wrap was slightly different today.  I used a tortilla instead of a Flatout b/c I forgot Flatouts until I was clear on the other side of the store, and the tortillas were right in front of me.  They are Mission Life Balance Whole Wheat and seemed pretty good.

Back to work and solving financial problems.  In my line of work what seems like the smaller problems end up taking the most time and energy.  For example, helping someone develop and implement a budget and reduce spending is really hard, but building an investment portfolio and doing their retirement plan is somewhat easy.  Seems backward, but rings true.  i had some lemon ginger tea while I crunched #s.

Before I knew it 3:30 rolled around and I knew I should eat something before my two back to back meetings.  I bought a Kashi Go Lean Roll the other day, and tried it out.  It was caramel nut something flavored, and not that impressive.  The sticky texture made it hard to eat, and the flavor was a little too protein-bar-y.  But, with lots of protein and fiber it held me over until after 7, so no gripes there.

I had the other half of my apple while heading out of the office:

Because of our long day and hunger Chris and I decided to go to Si Senor for dinner instead of cook at home.  I had chips & salsa, and 1 1/2 tacos (one chicken, 1/2 beef).  I forgot the camera in the car and was too lazy to go get it.  After we ate we picked up the LB at my mom’s house and went home.  I knew I had to go work out since tomorrow would probably not work out (no pun intended ;)), so I headed off to the gym at nearly 10. 

I set into a leg workout, did some abs, and then wrapped up with a sweaty 15 minutes on the stair mill.  I am so happy that spending time on the stair mill is becoming easier; I used to barely last 10 minutes, and lately 15-30 minutes haven’t been too tough.  Andrea, thanks for the idea to do intervals!!  It totally makes the time go by and is easier mentally than doing the same speed the whole time.

I got home around 11:15 and now it is after 12:30!  I had better go since I have to be up earlier tomorrow.  As you know, I have been SO bad about going to bed at a decent hour for the last two weeks.  I just can’t say no!  At least the sleep I’ve gotten has been better 🙂  Nighty, night, y’all!