Daylight savings. I guess it makes sense.

I was born and raised in Hawaii and we don’t have daylight savings time there.  It’s just Hawaiian time all the time, HA!  What that usually means is people just roll on in when ever they get to it.  I didn’t really follow that rule – even though I’m half Hawaiian….must have been the Dutch side of me.  🙂

Back to the topic.  Last night I did what I’ve been reminded to do from all sources, which was move the clocks in the house forward an hour so that when we woke up this morning we would be on time.  I need to do 13yo and 11yo’s alarm clocks, the clock in the office and the clock on the coffee machine.  I’m trusting HunBun can move his own alarm clock forward, I guess I’ll see when I go back and check.

I think daylight savings makes more sense the further into the “savings” we go.  Right now it’s still dark in the am and dark in the pm – but I know how quickly that will switch.  One morning I’ll wake up and be like “dang did I oversleep?” and at night I’ll say “dang, is it 9 o’clock already?”.

This week I’m prepping to be running around like a nutter.  I’m headed off to So. Cal this week for work.  For someone who didn’t plan any meetings I’ve sure booked up my calendar.  It was my good friend Ann’s birthday last week so we are celebrating Tuesday night when I come in.  I’ll be taking her to Natural Café for a celebratory dinner – see we’ll eat a healthy dinner so we can go find us a not so healthy treat for dessert.  We’re smart like that.

Today I was very productive.  I hit the treadmill for an iFit run through Solvang, CA.  I tried the Beta version of the map feature – it worked fine for the first half mile then got hung up on the rest.  So I just stared at my route without seeing the street view as I would have liked.  Bleah.  I hope iFit get’s its technical issues fixed soon.  It’s been a real pooter.

Solvang is a bit hillier than I thought.  I was able to maintain the 6.0 at 6% incline – but when that sucker kept scooting up to 10% incline I had to punch my speed down to 4.0.  Every now and again I have a fear of flying off the edge of the treadmill – usually when my thoughts start wandering and I forget I’m on a moving belt.  Whoops.  That would be no bueno for sure.

After getting my healthy on I decided to get my spring cleaning  on – by tackling the office.  We have one of those 5×5 shelves from Ikea.  I love the clean lines but also the volume of space it has for us to fill.  I went through and put a bunch of stuff into 2 shred piles – a personal shred for our home shredder and a business shred for the shred bins at the office.  I also tossed a bunch of stuff into the recycle bin – you know magazines that I had been saving for years (oh, yes the date was from 2009) and some Dummy books for Visio & Excel that I had bought for work.  Those?  Oh, those were from 2008.  Good Gravy!

I also have a lot of books which I rarely part with.  I did a double shelf on some of those just to not spread them through the entire 5×5.  I found some old photos of HunBun and I when we first started dating.  Man I dressed like a schlub – Gee Whiz!  I mean I’m no fashion plate but Yikers.  We have a lot of new photos from our many Disney vacations (hee hee – planning for another this Summer, if I can get him to agree – which I will, Bwahahahahaha) and in those I think I’m looking ok.  Sometimes clothes just don’t fit like you think they fit while you’re wearing them – it’s only when you see a photo you say “is that how that shirt hangs…eeps”.

My plan was to clean the whole office – desk and file folder and stuff on the walls.  I was only able to get through the 5×5.  It seriously is a lot of work to go through all these boxes and see all the stuff that I’ve been hoarding for no reason.  HunBun was pleased.  Whee.  He’s the clean freak of the couple – so for him to be happy about how much I threw away was a gold star for me.

 

 

Oh and my weekend started with a great success – I finished the hardest (worst) puzzle we have ever done.  HunBun gave up weeks ago.  Yes, you read that right – WEEKS AGO!  We started this puzzle before our trip to Florida and I just finished it Saturday night.  UGH!  It was one of those puzzles that is a picture made up of teeny tiny pictures.  So each piece was made up of 4 individual pictures.  Geesh!   I made it my mission to finish it this weekend.  We had not eaten on the dining table for so long that I had had enough.   See that piece of paper at the top?  That was my best friend during this puzzle-palooza.  It was a picture of the completed puzzle and I literally folded and unfolded that thing so often to find where these darn pieces would fit.  The easiest were the pieces with people on them…then after that it was a bunch of rockets and shuttles…then I had to deal with just splotches of blue, green, yellows, pinks, purples and black/whites.  Oh my!  So glad I finished it.  This is NOT one that I will redo.  It’s going into the “To Donate” pile.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night….  Now it’s off to bed – to start a week with more daylight in it!

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, monday. la laa la laa laa laaaa

Not sure if you all know that song but it sure is something you can hum along too…since I don’t know any words but Monday and La.  🙂

Janathon…Janathon…Janathon.  I didn’t get my Saturday post in within 24 hours, but that’s because I didn’t do any “exercise“.  Did a bunch of walking around the house and ran some errands – but nothing you would define as “exercise” for the day.  Bleah.

Sunday, January 13th: Ran 5.5 treadmill miles.

Push up challenge:  10 FU’s and a bunch of planks.

Who out there as an iFit enabled piece of exercise equipment?  Well ever since iFit changed their website my treadmill has not communicated at all with my iFit website.  So annoying when you pay for a service that no longer works.  I sent an email with my issues a bit ago and am waiting for the response.  I have another issue to write in about – “Unable to download workout – Error” that I got on my machine this weekend.  ARGH!

Monday, January 14th: A.M. free weights for the arms.

Push up challenge: 10 FU’s and a few chaturanga’s too.

I’m going to take a run/walk up to the Starbucks at lunch time to get 2 miles in and hitting up Vinyasa Flow this evening.

This weekend HunBun and I are headed to Disneyland so I can run the 5K and Half-Marathon.  We’re hoping the weather stays clear so the Grapevine (I5 route’s through the mountains) is easy to drive.  Last weekend they closed it down for 20 hours…and people were stuck!  No thanks!

Enjoy your Monday!

See ya later.

Cathy

 

Janathon – Day 6 (quick update)

Supposed to do 8…did 4.  BLEAH!

Sunday, January 6th: Treadmill 4 miles (SSSSLLLLLLOOOOOWWWW) and my PU (push up) challenge.  I did 7 FU (full on) PU’s and 20 knee PU’s!

Whoopie!  I did 2 more FU PU’s  than I completed Saturday so I am super jazzed about that.

I keep my arms close to the side of my body – similar to a yoga chaturanga (I posted a Lululemon link for reference).  I feel more confident in my form when I keep my arms close, it allows me to move slowly through the move and not just collapse down and then wobble my way back up.

How to Chaturanga

I do my FU push ups first because that allows me to go until fatigue – or my form gets all janky.  Plus this is what I want to improve so I’d rather have my full arm strength (what little I have) available to do these.

Once my FU form is lost I transition to my knees to do as many knee style push ups as I can (trying to maintain at least 20 since that was my baseline).

Once I get super strong…maybe I’ll do these…  Heck Yeah!

See ya later…with my Janathon Day 7 update.

Cathy

 

Back…with a new word!

I know right?!?  That’s what my 10yo would say and I find most appropriate here.  Long break again where I just didn’t find a moment to log in and jot stuff down.  So let’s catch up shall we?

It wasn’t a Staycation it was a Projecation

So last week HunBun and I took time off from work to do a bunch of stuff that we had procrastinated long enough on.  You know how you do “around the house projects” and then look back and say “why didn’t we do that last year (or 2 years ago)?”  Yeah, that’s us.  So with the wonky weather in the Bay Area, CA last week we decided that it was going to be filled with long awaited projects – Whee!  Bleah!

The weather was a major decider in what we dd every day.  So with Monday being projected as rain-free, we decided to tackle the dirt square by the front door.  Now it hasn’t always been a dirt square, but over time the plants got all janky and we moved the big tree that was the focal point…so that gradually it became that uneven dirt/rock spot RIGHT WHERE EVERYONE CAN SEE!  It irritated HunBun to his last nerve…so we decided to do this.

Now that’s a welcome

We planted 3 palms and then covered the dirt with some landscaping river rocks.  We have to get taller pots for the 3 plants we’ll have in the back right under the window.  The current plants are in shorter pots and we need some height change for effect.  Thanks HGTV!

We should have kept going on the other side of the door where we have a rectangle planting area under the other window.  But this project took us about 4.5 hours and we were hecka tired from lugging rocks and placing them.

Then the rain came….

So when it was cold and wet outside we spent the days inside doing everyone’s favorite maintenance activity – touch up painting – YAH!  You know those projects where you can’t tell you did anything?  That’s what touch up painting is.  I mean I guess the crown and base looks shinier…and we don’t have those random pencil/scuff/chip spots in the hallway, office, master bedroom, master bathroom, front bathroom, laundry room.  But really you can’t tell that we spent 2.5 days doing touch up painting.  Well except in the laundry room where the door and casing went from a yellowish straight from Home Depot color to a crisp clean white.  And in the hallway where we unfortunately, for us, used a different paint finish on the touch ups and can now see blops of color here and there.  UGH.  We’ll have to re-touch the hall when we do the front room where the Christmas tree is since both rooms are the same gray color.  I don’t have any pictures for you…since it’d look like I was just showing you pictures of every room in our house.  🙂

So my new word, projecation is really because we did a whole bunch of projects while on our “vacation” or “staycation” as they call it now since we didn’t go anywhere.  Well projecation can cause some provocation of mini arguments and irritations.  Too much together time?  No more like two people who like to do things a certain way and expect the other to be a mind reader to know exactly what we’re going to do as soon as we decide to do it.  Nothing major…just a bunch of long loud breathing and forced quiet to calm down.  🙂  I’m sure any of us in a relationship totally gets it.

Sweats

I did a couple of runs and circuits during the projecation.  Nothing too jazzy or exciting.  Just used my interval clock and did a bunch of random things until sweat started dripping all over. 

I did get to 2 yoga classes during the week.  My favorite Monday night Vinyasa Flow class from 5-6pm then did a new class Xplore Yoga just added – Wednesday night Vinyasa Flex from 5-6pm.  I liked the new class a lot.  Building up some flexibility and the instructor was fantastic.  Xplore also added a new class on Friday night – Crossflow, a blend of cross fit and yoga.  I wasn’t able to get to the class because 12yo had his first band concert.

Yes.  That is my 12yo.  Currently taller than me and I’m 5’10”!  They had the church sanctuary decorated with white christmas trees in groups of 3.  It was really beautiful and the concert was lovely too.  HA!

Eats

On Saturday I did the Dr. Oz 3 day cleanse, where all you do is drink 4 smoothies a day.  It’s pretty easy to stick to and the smoothies did fill me up and kept me satisfied.  I didn’t do the epsom salt bath every night though, not sure what impact that would have on the detoxifying.  It must have worked because by the 3rd day my tongue felt perpetually coated with guck.  It was probably the easiest “cleanse” or “deprivation” style diet I’ve ever tried.  I call it a deprivation diet because you deprive yourself of certain types of food.  So on the last smoothie of the last day – I quit.  I know right!  Well the reason I quit was because I made this tasty delight:

Easy Dinner

4 ingredients (+ salt & pepper): Red potatoes, Hilshire Farms Hardwood Smoked Chicken Sausage, Leeks, Fuji Apple.  Instructions:  1) Slice everything up – the potatoes, leeks and apple into thin slices for quick cooking.  2) Add 1 Tbsp olive oil to pan and saute the red potatoes until almost cooked through.  3) Add the chicken sausage to get a nice brown color and warmed through as the sausage is pre-cooked.  4) Add the leeks and apples at the same time and cook for another 5-6 minutes until the apples and leeks start to soften.  EAT!

It smelled so good and I really wanted something warm and hearty to eat instead of another cold veggie smoothie.  So I said goodbye to Dr. Oz and hello to warm delicious food that I could chew.  🙂  This dish was a big hit and as soon as I posted it to my FB I got a bunch of questions from family about what I made and how to cook it up.  Winning!

My other eats since Monday have been my norm, protein pancakes and wraps.

I forgot the banana

Cukes & Carrots for snack

Roast Beef wrap

Then last night 12yo and I headed to the Westfield mall down in Santa Clara for this:

Oh yeah!

Althleta opened up a new store and I got an invite to the grand opening.  .  So I asked HunBun if he wanted to go.  He said “uh, no”.  So I asked 12yo and he said “Sure”.  Don’t you love kids?  I appreciated it because that meant we could blaze down in the car pool lane since we’d be heading toward San Jose at 5pm – smack in the middle of commute traffic.  Sweet!

We got a parking in the first row we turned down – Winning!  Then did a quick search for the store, since we got there at 530 and the invite said the opening was from 6-8pm.  Well once we found the store we saw that they were letting the invitees in the doors.  So instead of heading to the food court 12yo agreed to go in to the store.  😉  It’s like a healthier candy store!  They offered some little bites and wine/sparking water as you roamed the racks…which made it difficult to try things on.  Good thing I had an extra pair of hands….which meant that he drank up my sparking water.  LOL

I found some cute new winter running gear that I can’t wait to sweat on:

Sweet new gear

Goody bag with purchase

After enduring my shopping activity – which included 12yo holding my purse, belt and sweater at different points as I tried on 3 tops; we headed up to the food court to find something to eat for dinner.  He got a sushi platter and I got Chicken Pad Thai.  It was so much food that he and I shared my Pad Thai with some left over for his school lunch today.  It was really tasty…but next time I’d order without the protein.

Food court Pad Thai

We grabbed a hot drink from Starbucks and headed home.

It was a great week off from work and hopefully I’m back in the routine – early wake ups to exercise, blog, work, yoga, cook, chill, sleep – Repeat.  🙂

See ya later

Cathy

Weekend Update

For you loyal readers (THANKS MUCHOS)…here’s the weekend update.  As you read, right before this, I started my monologueing and wooshed right over my weekend.  I did a bit better on the photo logging, with the exception of Saturday.

Our nephew slept over Friday night and it was X-box’ing, a movie and then to bed for the 3 of them.  Then getting out of bed at 4am Saturday morning when I hear 2 sets of feet trying to creep around the house completely unaware that our creaky floor is practically saying “HEY YOU KIDS GET BACK TO BED BEFORE SHE WAKES UP!”.  Did they listen to that floor?  Heck no!  So who do you think had to get out of her warm bed to flick on the kitchen light and tell them “I see the top of your head poking out the side of the ottoman – get back in bed”.  Jeesh!  I don’t know what they thought they were going to do since they didn’t turn on any lights AND they went into the family room instead of the room where the X-box is.  Weirdos.

After waking up at a normal hour (630am, UGH) and finishing up my circuit workout, I whipped up a huge batch of scrambled eggs, turkey bacon (SMELLS SO GOOD) and hashbrowns for the 4 dudes in the house.  I whipped myself up a protein pancake topped with blueberries and ate the leftover 1/2 bacon from HunBun.  Since I’m such an awesome home-maker (insert snarky smirk here), I didn’t realize I had no milk until I went to pour some for the boys at breakfast.  Oh well…GATORADE for all!  🙂

They went back to the X-box while I did my favorite chore of all time – CLEANING BATHROOMS – Super Bleah!

About noon nephew’s mom and lil bro came over to pick him up…and spend some time hanging out in the backyard while HunBun did his most favorite chore of all time – CLEANED THE YARD.

That’s what she said…HA HA!

After the visitors left it was errand time.  Needed to get some groceries, pick up some (cheap) nice black dress pants, black dress shoes and a long sleeved button white shirt for 12yo and his upcoming Band performance (for 3rd graders no less) and some butt cushions for our wooden dining room seats (as HunBun has complained numerous times about his aching booty after sitting there when working from home).  So that meant a drive to the Fremont Hub to hit up Bed, Bath & Beyond, Target, Trader Joe’s and Safeway!  Love the convenience!

So our erranding was successful UNTIL I left 12yo & 10yo in the car while I went to grab the last few things from Safeway.  When I came back to the car guess what happened?  Give up?  (I about did too)  That darn car wouldn’t start up!!!  SUPER ARGH!  I calmly (I think it was calmly) asked the boys what they had running while I was in the store…radio, a/c, gps screen.  So I just pulled out my roadside assistance card, gave them a call and was told someone would be out to assist me in about 30 minutes.  After about 40 minutes the assister called me and said he’s been looking for us in the parking lot.  So I explained where we were (a lot more complex than it should have been) we spotted his white van…flagged him down (because apparently he still didn’t see us)…he popped the hood…pulled out his little jumping box…gave us a zap and we started right up.  WHEW!  We got on our way and both boys apologized for using the battery power while I was in the store (pretty sweet of them)..and I said “hey you couldn’t have known and we got to spend time together”.

You gotta cherish those little pieces of time while those boys are still young enough to want to hang out with their mom.  🙂

And that was just my Saturday!  Why do I think my life is so boring?  😀

Sunday started with a Meetup group run…except for the fact that there was no one else meeting up AND I dropped my dang Nano while waiting for apparently no one to show up!  You can barely see (but I can totally see) the spiderweb that is now in the top corner of my screen.  CURSES!  I was so irritated I just started running…but had to stop cause that dumb Nano lady started telling me what song I was listening to from what playlist.  Are you kidding me?  Didn’t I shut you off?  So I had to stop and go through every single setting to figure out why the heck she started blabbering at me again.  Finally after clicking through every – and I mean every – setting on that thing I finally clicked on “Male” then “Off” and she shut her yap.  I used all that annoying energy to haul patootie down the trail – throwing in some speed intervals with walking.  I got up to a 8min mile pace and ended at an 8:30min mile pace – pretty sweet – maybe I should tick myself off before every race? 🙂  I didn’t run very far – I think just 2.5 miles since I had stuff to do at home.

I’m reconsidering the drive out to my Meetup group Sunday runs.  It’s about a 30 min drive there and back…and not to be a complete cheap-o…with the gas prices where they are at (I filled up at $4.45 on Friday – and that was the cheapest station!) I may need to reconsider my plan.  I’ve got a perfectly good neighborhood to run around in on Sundays.  Maybe I’ll just do every other week or once a month at Campbell and the rest will be pounded out around home.  Decisions Decisions.

I did try out a new watch I got in support of Breast Cancer awareness.  Heartmonitors.com had a special announced on Active.com for a deal on one of their GPS watches.  Took me a little while to figure out but certainly a bit smaller than my Garmin plus it comes with a watch function so you can actually use it as a watch if you’re into the fitness look.  I thought you could track your steps with it but I’ll have to look up the detail on the interweb as they post the user manual there.

After I got home I felt like a superstar 1950’s housewife….not because I wore a dress and pearls around the house but because I was a baking fiend (and that’s what Barbara Billingsly would be doing for the Beaver)!  I picked up a mini-donut pan at BB&B on Friday and made some gluten free donuts for breakfast.  I put too much nutmeg because they tasted like gingerbread…and looked like dog turds (but that’s not because of the nutmeg – HA).  The “poo” appearance was because 10yo and I put too much mix in each of the little pan holes and they poofed up and over.  Hey every minute a lesson is learned…and ours that morning was not to overfill the mini-donut pan (or maybe it was follow the directions that said “do not fill more than 1/2 way”).

Soy MIsto and Homey Donuts

Before I left for my run I threw some chicken breasts and Stubb’s BBQ sauce into the ol crock pot and turned that whiz bang gadget on.  The entire house smelled DE-licious all day long.

10yo and 12yo came (were dragged) along with me to the Verizon store to activate 10yo’s replacement cell.  That kid is on his 4th phone already.  Keeps losing the dang things.  I laid the law down this time (I think) and said if he’s not talking on it, the phone is in his backpack pocket or on the charger at home.  We’ll see how far the law goes with that one.  I need to find a cheap replacement for 12yo’s phone that went swimming in the ocean when they were in Hawaii this summer.  I’m checking around before I break down and buy one from the store.  Cheese balls these kids!  Already expensive and all these bonus buys just add up!

To finish up the day, I whipped up some gluten free bisquick biscuits to go along with the BBQ chicken for dinner.  I didn’t have enough shortening so I threw in some Heart Balance spread to make up the difference.  So yummy…especially with the drizzle of honey I put all over my 2 biscuits.  Slurp-ur-rific!

Verizon store waste…Lunch Wrap…GF Biscuits

We had the World Series on and learned later that the Giants won (I don’t know what I was doing instead of watching – going through my stack of magazines maybe?)  Then learned that a bunch of dopes in the city decided to “celebrate” by burning stuff in the middle of the streets in the Mission.  Turds!

And now you’re caught up from my weekend.  Hope your’s was as adventurous!

See ya later!

Cathy

Trail Hog Bib pick up

Race Bib Pick Up

Sometimes GPS makes me feel dumber than ever.  I drove out to Road Runner Sports in Campbell to pick up my race bib for the Brazen Trail Hog 5K happening this Saturday.  First some nutter next to me decided he wanted to go straight EVEN THOUGH he was obviously in a turn only lane and I was also turning!  So after slamming my brakes and watching the nutter wiggle-waggle his steering wheel as he attempted to overcorrect his major fail THEN get back into his turn only lane (DONKEY) I blindly followed my GPS (giving him the stink eye as I drove past the goober) as it made me drive in a complete circle.  I finally just drove into the shopping complex with Whole Foods and pulled up Road Runner Sports on my phone – then after making another U-Turn found my way to their parking lot.  Criminey!

Swag Bag

I was surprised I got one and it was filled with some pretty useful stuff…and something I hope I don’t ever have to use.

I’m digging the Swag

 

Hoping I never have to use this though

I love the shirt and bib design for this race…it’s what really caught my attention and why I signed up.  Pretty slick, huh!

Get outta my way, I’m a Trail Hog

As this is my first trail run I’m being cautious and signed up for the 5K.  Brazen’s cool about letting you switch which race you want to compete in when you pick up your bib.  So I let the friendly gal know that I was sticking to the 5K (in my head I was saying “so I don’t faceplant or break something important the first time out”).  I’m super jazzed for Saturday to get here.  I’m going to convince HunBun to come with…to give me some cheerleading support and also so we could maybe hit some Eatery on the way back.  🙂

While at Road Runner Sports I also grabbed some super bright compression socks.  These’ll go great with my fancy new shoes I just got.  I’ll be sure to post a photo of my race day outfit…if it’s the stuff I think I’m going to wear it’ll be pretty darn colorful I tell you.

Aren’t you prettier in pink!

See ya later!

Cathy

What’s the coolest competitive event you’ve entered?