Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Weigh in 022817 - Woohoo!


Down 1.2 lbs!!  After that 100+ point day last week, I'm pretty happy with that!

I only made it to the gym once last week - yesterday.  And I took it kind of easy. It's hard to explain, but I had basically a toilet incident Sunday!  Randy & I went out the breakfast like we usually do and the server was on the ball keeping my iced tea glass filled, so I probably had 3 tall glasses, plus a glass of water.  Then we went grocery shopping and of course I had to make an immediate bee-line for the bathroom.  As I stood up....I managed to twist my knee just enough to cause excruciating pain where I couldn't put any weight on it!  I had to lean on the cart in order to move. That was the worse shopping trip I've ever endured!  I went and sat by the door while Randy checked out and that gave it time to stiffen up even more.  I thought I was going to cry!  But by the time we got home, I got out of the car and was barely limping and then shortly after, I was 95% fine.  How weird is that???  

Anyhoo.  I made the mistake of wearing heels to work Monday and felt a few twinges that made me more cautious and was especially careful on the stairs.  At the gym, I kept the treadmill at 3.0 and only did 1.5 miles. 

I've had the stuff for this little project for a while - it's basically a recipe file.
This thingy holds 100 note cards and has 5 tabs with labels.  So I divided them into beef, chicken, pork, fish & pasta.  I'll only put family-approved recipes in there, so when it's time to figure out a grocery list, I can pull as many cards as I need and there's all the ingredients right there.  Anything to make menu planning easier is a plus in my book!

I also got this cookbook from my meeting tonight - I flipped thru it and saw some good options, so I should have some new things to try.
Speaking of trying new foods....I can't believe I didn't take a picture to tonight's dinner!  It's called Chicken Lombardy and someone posted the link (here) on Facebook, and I gave it a try.  
chicken-lombardy
(photo from the website)
I left the green onions out, but followed the rest of the recipe as directed.  OMG. It was so good!  I didn't run it thru the recipe builder yet, but I can't imagine it's too high in points.  There's really only butter & cheese that are the "bad" stuff in it.  I used baby bella mushrooms, which are da bomb anyway, and there was just enough sauce to keep the chicken moist as it baked.  Yummmm.   This recipe will be making another appearance.

Later, ya'll!
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Friday, February 24, 2017

Ugh. Won't do that again! Weigh in 022217




Before I share the utter horrifying picture of my tracker from yesterday..... I had a small .6lb gain at my WW meeting.  It seems like that's how my weigh-ins are going lately - small gain, then good loss.  Meh.  I was in a major funk on Tuesday, so I went to the Wednesday meeting instead.   

I also haven't been to the gym this week - it was so nice last weekend that I spent as much time as possible outside.  Got the yard cleaned up of sticks and fought the urge to rake (it's February.  In Michigan.  There's no way winter is over!) and Sunday we took the dog for a walk on the local nature trail.  And now that Miss Angela is mobile again I won't have to do the studio shuttle unless I really want to. 

Yesterday was a day of some serious "IDGAF" and as a consequence.....I still feel seriously disgusting today.  I did actually track what all I ate and them promptly deleted the whole day from my tracker.

Disclaimer.  I acknowledge this day did happen.  And like they always tell us to do at the meetings....I'm moving on.  Today is a new day.  

Already (I'm at work - you can tell I'm so busy today!) I'm very proud that I didn't mortally wound one of the guys here who just shoved a plate of still-warm, homemade pastries in my face.  We have a middle Eastern driver who still lives with his mom and often brings in goodies that she makes.  And trust me, she is an amazing cook.  But I gracefully declined the pastries and feel pretty good about that. 

Brace yourself. 
And don't judge. 

(small pic = whispering)
OMG.

Let's break it down, shall we?  Let's explore. 
Breakfast 
Tim Hortons Bagel BELT - 18 pts
peanut crunch donuts - 11 pts
Lunch
Salad - 10 pts
obviously the best thing I had all day. 
with 2 eggs. tuna, cheese & fat free ranch. 
Snacks
Bag o Fritos - 10 pts
Granola bar - 6 pts
Dinner #1
I went to do some prop painting at the dance studio last night & they brought in pizza
2 slices Little Casears Hot & Ready pepperoni & 1 breadstick - 23 pts
Dinner #2
on my way home after painting. (aka totally unnecessary)
McDonalds Quarter pounder with cheese - 18 pts
medium fries -  10 pts


...and I just realized that I forgot to track the 4 Tagalong Girl Scout cookies I had, too.
So yeah - it's actually worse.

Blargh.  
I got nothing to even say about this. 

And then!!  This part is actually funny and probably would have happened even if I'd been on plan 100%.
I knew I was going to be painting, so I dug out a pair of really old jeans.  I also knew that, for a long time, there had been a hole at the corner of one of the back pockets, but my t-shirt was long enough to cover it.  So off I went!  You can probably guess where this is going. 

 The props we were working on are part of the production they're putting on this year.  It's based on the boardgame Clue, so there is a dining room table & chairs, but also a series of 5 doors.  So we were painting the doors & frames.  Sho nuff....the first time I bent down to dip my roller in the paint...... this happened. 
and my t-shirt was no longer long enough to cover it!  So I had to spend the evening with my hoodie tied around my waist.  It was kind of drafty!

So yeah.  One thing I was surprised about is that considering as gross as I feel right now, I was still able to easily take my rings off when I put lotion on my hands!!  Usually when I eat a lot of salt, my fingers swell and getting my rings off is a struggle.  Maybe drinking my usual amount of water helped in that aspect?  


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Sunday, February 19, 2017

O glorious weekend!

We've been enjoying record-high temps here in SE Michigan the last couple days and have been loving every minute of it!!  Except for the monster sinus headaches I woke up with Saturday & Sunday due to barometer changes (insert eye roll), 
it's been so nice!  
Sunrise from the parking lot at work Friday.  I'm so glad my desk isn't in the front wing of the building.  With views like this?  My mornings would be totally non-productive and my Instagram feed would be all sunrises! 

Randy took Friday off work and he took Miss Angela out car shopping.  Happily, they were successful!  He took her to a couple different lots where we saw possible cars last weekend.  She test drove a couple and she very wisely chose one she could pay for entirely by herself!  
She drove when we went out to dinner to celebrate!
Image may contain: car
Meet Gertrude - a 2005 Pontiac G6 GT.  
She needs new brakes, so she'll be going into the shop tomorrow, but other than that - the few minor things she needed Randy did yesterday.  

It's good timing, since now she doesn't start her new job until the 27th - the restaurant she'll be hostessing at shut down for remodelling so they felt it was pointless for her to work a couple days just to have 10+ days off.  And it's mid-winter break for the local school district, which means no dance.  But I'm sure they'll have a couple classes thrown in there because competitions are starting soon. 
I spent a bit of time cleaning up sticks in the yard.  I thought about raking the front yard, but I'm sure we'll probably have a blizzard yet and another 4 feet of snow dumped on us.  It was hard to remember that it's still February! 
This pretty baby is the only one who wanted to stop and pose for me!
The cats enjoyed open windows.  Maddie was really watching that squirrel. 

Today, Randy & I went out to breakfast, then to a craft / antique mall to browse.  Surprised that neither of us saw anything that had to come home with us. 
When we got home, he went off to a friend's house to play radio and Angel & I took Jack to Holland Ponds, a local nature trail.  
We thought it would be a lot muddier than it was. 
It was nice to see the ponds full to the top.  When I was there last fall, they were low and swampy. 
I think Jack was unhappy to find his favorite place to wade still frozen!  That's OK, he was still plenty muddy enough when I dried him off at the car. Angel's in giving him a bath right now, I'm not sure if he was gassy or the mud was that compost-y but he is a stinky boy!!

Hope you've all had a great weekend, too!

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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Weigh-in 021417

Woohoo, down a very unexpected 2.7 lbs tonight!  
That makes my total loss back down to over 40 lbs since the day I started this journey.   
I'd been feeling down & blah the last couple days.  Lots of drama at home with the kid, financial worries, dental work.  Yeah.  Life in general.  So I really wasn't expecting to see anything good on the scale at all.  

btw, is it sad to be ready for your kid to leave the nest?  As I see it, she has 2 options.  The day after the dance recital in June, pay a visit to our local armed forces recruiter (remember, I was in the Navy so I'm OK with this) or ship her off to her bio dad's house in Nebraska.  
John, if you're reading this - it's your turn!!

Anyhoo.  Thanks to playing chauffeur, I haven't gotten to the gym yet this week.  I had 2 temporary crowns put on at the dentist yesterday so I sure as hell didn't feel like doing much of anything anyway.  2 on the right side, one on top and one on bottom.  So I was numbed from eyeball to jaw, including half my nose.  Once the numbness wore off, the places I got the anesthesia shots hurt like crazy and today the teeth themselves hurt.  But this is all normal.  It happens every time I go in.  I hate it.  It sucks. 

Tomorrow night is Zumba at the studio.  Apparently they have 2 classes going on at the same time.  I used to do Nancy's class - she's pretty hard-core and I would be dripping sweat when I was done.  Now there's a Julie who does more aerobics with her Zumba so I'm curious to see how her class is.  The owner of the studio and some of the other studio moms prefer her, so I'll give it a try. 

So yeah, it's time for bed.  I'm going thru that phase where I'm having a hard time sleeping again so I need to do something about it. 
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Sunday, February 12, 2017

Costumes & old friends

It's after midnight, but I keep thinking it's Saturday night.  
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Miss Angela being mobile on her own!  Going back to doing the dance studio shuttle 4 days this week is very time consuming!  Monday, Wednesday and Saturday I could actually just drop her off & go back later, since she's there for 3+ hours. Thursday is only one class, so I stayed. 

On the plus side.  Most of the dances are done, they're just polishing them for competition next month.  And the costumes are starting to come in.  I love to see the costumes!  She is loving hiphop line.  They're wearing work boots, ripped jeans and (from what I've researched because being former military, this is what I do) actual real Army surplus camo jackets!  They're doing a compilation of songs and calling it Girl Power.   
They sensed the camera.....

Then she was noticing how much she'll stand out in the Clue production as Miss Peacock.  Most everyone else is wearing darker colors, Miss Scarlett is wearing red with black lace over it.  Col Mustard is wearing a dark gold jacket and black plants.  Miss Plum (they're all Misses) is in dark purple and Miss Green is in dark green. The detectives and weapons are all in black.  The littlest girls are maids and are in white, as well as the butler  Then there's Angel.....
 In glowing teal!  
I'm still not too thrilled that they having her doing a back walk-over on a dining room table and doing a toe-touch off of it, especially after seeing her almost fall off of it. And right now she carries a plastic knife the size of something Michael Myers carries in horror movies, but will soon have a smaller one. 

Today after she got out of class, we went car shopping.  She got an idea of what is out there for sale and what she likes vs what she can afford.  Sorry, Sunshine - the 2017 Mustang for $33K is just a wee bit out of your range!  We have a couple other places to check out tomorrow.  She starts her new job Tuesday, so we need to find something quick!  

I was poking around ebay and found a couple pins that I wanted for my Navy shadowbox and updated it. They're the shiny ones along the left side, middle.  I was so exited to find the postal hat pin like I used to wear on the back of my command ballcaps - until someone broke into my car and stole my nasty, sweaty, smelly ballcap with my pin on it! I looked on ebay a bunch of times, but I must not have been using the right phrases to search by.  I also got the 2nd class (my rank) pin that went of the front of my ballcap.  
Ew.  I should have taken a better picture after I actually attached each thing neatly instead of them just lying there.  But I'm pretty happy with it.  Randy had to get in on my "I love me" wall so there's his Arkansas constable stuff in there, too. 
 The patch on the upper right is for WestPac '95 - the cruise around the western Pacific.
The darker plaque on the lower left is for decommissioning the Canopus and the white plaque at the bottom I got from the Lincoln when I reenlisted.  
These should have gone on a jacket, but I was in Bahrain working when we could have ordered them and (squinting evilly at former coworkers, wherever they may be) I never found out about them.  I probably could find a place online to get one now if I really wanted.  

Why have I just noticed all the different colored frames???  These are in the hall, but the ones in the rest of the living room I have painted black.  I sense a weekend project coming up once it gets warm.
OMG - I'm so looking forward to Memorial Day!  I will be getting together with my 2 partners in crime from my Canopus days!  We haven't seen each other since decommissioning in November 1994.  Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, Laura (in the middle) & I found each other a long time ago.  Gin (on the right) just got on there about 6 months ago.  So I'm going to drive to Cincinnati to pick up Laura, then we're going to road trip to Houston to spend a week with Ginnie!  This is gonna be a hoot!

Are you doing anything fun this weekend?

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Tuesday, February 7, 2017

~RIP Lorenzo~

(yay!  My hashtag post title worked how I wanted it!)
 February, you're only a week old, but you're not starting out very nice!  

So last Friday, Miss Angela was over at my sister Linda's house, dog-sitting.  She got up early (for her) to go to dance.  Nothing unusual there.  At about 10:15am, she calls me, hysterical.  I finally got her to tell me that she was OK, but the car wasn't.  I got the gist that she'd been in an accident!  I gave the phone to Randy while I got dressed. and I heard him talking to who I assume was a police officer.  

Apparently she'd been in the right lane, about 2 miles from the studio, behind an SUV going well under the speed limit.  She glanced over her shoulder to see if she could change lanes and that brief moment was enough for this guy to slam on his brakes and she rear-ended him.  Since it was an SUV, so she went under his bumper.  So probably 0.02% damage to the underside of the bumper, probably just paint transfer.  But the Escort (aka Lorenzo) was totalled.
Thankfully, Angel only had minor bumps & bruises.  Her knee is visibly bruised.  She thinks she hit her throat on the steering wheel (a hazard of being short & sitting close to it) and there's a little quarter-sized bruise on the back of her hand that she says really hurts.  

By the time I got to the scene, the other car was long gone and the flatbed was ready to load it up.  The police officer let her sit in the back of his car to stay warm until I got there.  Which meant, of course, a Snapchat video that caused all of her friends to freak out!  They figured out where she was, but didn't put 2 & 2 together that she was ON her phone and her purse & backpack were next to her.  She wouldn't have those if she'd been arrested!  I walked up to the patrol car and tapped on the window.  When he rolled it down, I pointed at the car and said that was my daughter's car.  He pointed in the back seat and said "there's your daughter!"  Heehee!

 They hauled Lorenzo off to the "storage" lot and I let Angel out of the back of the patrol car and took her home.  I asked if she wanted to go to dance, but she pitifully said she just wanted to go home.  We went home & got Randy (who was very stressed about the whole situation) then stopped for breakfast before heading to the storage lot (aka salvage / junkyard).  He went in and they told him where it was.  So we got all of her personal affects and the tracker & antenna and license plate.  Randy stood there looking at it and wondered out loud if they would just let us sign over the title to them.  It seriously would have cost more to fix than the car is worth.  It's a 2000.  I drove it for 12 years before turning it over to Angel.  She's driven it for 2 years now.  I'm not sure how many miles were on it, but I know well over 160K.  Lots of rust. The huge dent from being T-boned last February.  A leaky gas tank.  And yes!  They let us sign over the title and we'll probably only have to pay for towing.  And more good news - since we're not filing a claim, our insurance won't go up.  

Miss Angela did get 2 tickets, tho.  One for expired insurance (which will be dropped since the current card just wasn't in the car) and the other for following another car too close.  So we'll have to call and get her an appointment at traffic court again.   Yay. 

So now we're car shopping.  We need to get her something ASAP since I had to leave work early today and will again tomorrow to get her to appointments.  My boss isn't happy about that, but she really couldn't reschedule today's since it was a job interview (that she happily got hired right away and now will really need wheels!)  Tomorrow is for the dentist - blargh. 

Anyhoo.  Send good car mojo this way so we find something reasonably priced & reliable quickly!

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#atozchallenge test post blah blah blah :)

Woohoo!  It's ON, baby!   
Since there's no official sign up, I guess I'm announcing my intentions of participating by doing this test post.  I wanted to see how a longer post title with the hashtag will come across thru dlvr.it to Twitter.  

As I was looking on Twitter, I saw someone complaining that the new changes were too "labor intensive" so they weren't sure if it was going to be worth their while.  Pretty sure my eyes rolled so hard I saw my brain!  Post a comment with your link on either the A-Z blog post for that day and / or comment it on their Facebook status for the day.  That's not hard work, peoples!  The hardest part will be to remember to so it....so I will simply set a reminder on my phone each day.  Bam.  Problem solved. 

I think I like this new format.  Those 1500+ blog signup lists had to have been so overwhelming for the co-hosts & their minions to go thru! And I always seemed to find the blogs of the people who signed up, but hadn't posted in 8 months. 
The only problem I can think of is not having the categories.  And the sheer number of links commented on FB and on the blog post is going to be insane.  But I'll reserve judgement to see how things go. 

Did you notice I discovered the delights of giphy.com?  Heehee!
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