Tag Archives: United States

Who is this?

I know right!   It’s been ages…I don’t even want to scroll back on my calendar to see when the last post was.  Bleh.

If I have to make an excuse on my own blog I really do have a good one.  It’s been super crazy town around here for the last few months.  I got a promotion with my company and as a result we are relocating the entire family to Southern California!  I had been balancing 2 jobs for almost a month and am now fully into my new role.  I’m SUPER excited about new position and more excited that I’ll be working in the same building as the people who work on my team.  I’ve been leading virtual teams for the last 6 years – it’ll be so nice to talk to people face to face, to grab them when I see them in the hall, or to have chit-chats at the coffee bar – rather than scheduling conference calls on everyone’s booked up calendar. 🙂

So with work all twisted…we’ve also been busting hump getting our house ready to sell.  You don’t realize how much you just live with until you start looking at your house as a potential pile of money.  😀  We are looking to put it on the market on Monday…so it’s the last weekend of cleaning and straightening before hordes start traipsing through here.  (HunBun is NOT looking forward to that at all).

The posting will be hit or miss for a while…but I’ll do my best.

See ya later!

Cathy

Daylight savings. I guess it makes sense.

extra-hour-daylight-savings-wasted-apology-ecards-someecards

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.

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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.

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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.

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

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

So unmotivated…..UGH!

I’m hoping that as I do my Janathon Day 7 update it will motivate me to do my exercise for Janathon Day 8.  Still hoping……

Janathon image

Monday, January 7th: 5-6pm Vinyasa Flow class at XploreYoga

Push Up Challenge:  7 FU’s (full-on style, just so you know I’m not swearing at you acronym style) and 20 Knees.  My yoga instructor may have chaturanga’d my arms to fatigue in class because it took me a while to get my 7 FU’s in and then to maintain my baseline of 20 Knees.  Eeesh.

I watched the Biggest Loser Sunday night and Monday night.  While I love Jillian Michaels…she sure turned on the beast factor this season.  I mean I get the need to motivate people – but it became apparent that these folks were not responding to her “in your face/drill sergeant” style of motivation.  On Monday when they had their little pow-wow and she agreed to modify her approach to better suit the needs of her team I was quite surprised.  Although it didn’t help as she is now down to 2 in just 2 shows.  Super Yikes!

Sooooo… I haven’t gotten motivated yet for more exercise on Janathon Day 8.  The only thing I have done is a ton of squats while on a conference call (otherwise I’d feel like a total slug) and 8 FU pushups at around 430pm.

I really need to NOT hit the snooze bar in the morning and just get my butt into that freezing cold garage and run or circuit my way to a warm sweaty state.  I’m so lame.

Tomorrow…Day 9 I predict will be much more sweaty than Day 8.  Count on it!

See ya later

Cathy

Happy New Year and all that stuff!

It’s been a while for sure.  I decided to take a break from practically everything binding during the holidays.  I just flopped here & there depending on how I felt or what someone in the family decided they wanted to do for the day.  It was really cold up here in Northern California (I know 30’s are not cold to many of you…but it was hecka cold to us)…so we didn’t want to spend too much time out in that cold and brisky air.

I did run a 5K on the 29th and came home with a runny nose and stuffy head for the next 2 days.  I didn’t realize how cold it was going to be waiting for our start.  Then after you heat up while running it certainly doesn’t help to stop and cool down so suddenly.  But oh well.

So I decided on my 2013 resolutions.  2012 was sort of successful….but not completely – especially the financially based resolution.  I know most folks say the best resolutions are S.M.A.R.T – Specific  Measurable  Actionable  Reasonable  and Time Bound.  Mine are sort of SMART….

2013 Resolutions

I do like them a lot.  I have some health…some wealth…and some well-being going on.  They are all things that are hard to wiggle out of – which is excellent for me but also things that I need to pay attention to.  I’ll do a 6 month review to see how far I’ve come.  🙂

I did join the Janathon as a way to stay motivated at the start of the year.  Of course I failed on the first day…not doing the exercise but more the blogging after it.  So I’m going to catch up right now!

Tuesday, January 1st: Took a 2 mile walk with the HunBun to Starbucks.

Wednesday, January 2nd: 1 hour Vinyasa Flex class with Elise at XploreYoga.

Thursday, January 3rd: 30 min treadmill intervals & 20 min arms circuit.

So I’m going great for the Janathon AND resolution #1.  I do have to go to the grocery today for some milk and cold cuts for 12yo’s lunch and breakfasts…but not really buying a whole lot else – so that hits resolution #2.  I’ve also acknowledged myself at the end of the last 2 days – so ka-pow #3!

Whew!  Now to translate all this productivity and accomplishment to the work day.

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

 

 

Goodbye rain….or that’s what the weather folks say

Yesterday was full of rain, rain, rain.  I dislike driving in the rain not only because the roads are slick but because of people who act like the rain requires them to drive as ridiculous as possible.  It’s either folks driving really fast, switching lanes and kicking up walls of water OR it’s the folks who drive extremely slow no matter the lane and brake like 40 feet before any car or intersection (no matter if the light is still green).  UGH!

The weather folks say that we had our last band of storms yesterday…so I’m expecting a return to normality on the California freeways and roads.  Fingers crossed.

So I finally opened the swag bag I got at the Athleta store opening on Tuesday night…I know I took a while.  Some pretty nifty stuff in there.

Athleta swag

Athleta swag

I need to start using my regular camera to take photos for the blog.  My Instagram App pictures are just not cutting it.  Bleah.

Snack Attack

So yesterday I was in a snacky mood.  So I poured a handful of cashews, dried cherries and dark chocolate baking chips onto a plate to eat while going through work emails.  Then I made myself a Swiss Miss Dark Chocolate cup of cocoa.  That instant mix is definitely one to try.  Tastes rich and creamy even when made with water.  I haven’t made with milk yet which I may try today with almond milk (cause of my tummy), if I’m craving cocoa later today.

 

 

 

Eats

I’ve been eating my normal protein pancake breakfasts and my random veggie lunches.  I am always envious of folks who have left overs to warm up but usually make just enough to feed the family with maybe a teeny tiny bit that wouldn’t fill anyone’s plate for a next day meal.

 

 

 

Pumpkin pancake

Pumpkin pancake

Pancake with some new toppings

Pancake with some new toppings

Veggie lunch

Veggie lunch

Sweats

I did a circuit workout yesterday morning to start the day right.

Warmed up with 2 minutes of sun salutations, followed by 12 sets of 60sec/10sec of plyometrics and old fashioned calisthenics (jumping jacks, high knees, etc.), then ending with 12 sets of 60sec/10sec of upper body exercises.

Whew!  Sweaty delight.  I like moving so quickly from one exercise to the next, doing that gets your heart pumping and keeps it pumping until the very end.

Then I went to Vinyasa Flex over at my yoga studio, Xplore Yoga.  The instructor focused on hamstring flexibility – which is great for my half-marathon training.  I always find I am more comfortable with my form when I continue with my yoga practice.

Finished the night by cooking some dinner for the family, trying to read all the blogs I subscribe to (didn’t) then falling asleep around 9:30pm.  I pressed some button on my alarm clock and couldn’t figure out what was happening with it.  It just showed 0:09.  Wha?!?  So after 10 minutes of fiddling with it HunBun said “hey maybe that’s the time you set for the snooze”.  Der!  As soon as I hit the snooze button the time showed up.  ARGH!

This morning I did a hill workout on the treadmill followed by 10 minutes of upper arm/back exercises with 3lb dumbbells.  I’m working hard to get that little jelly spot tightened up, you know that piece right under your arm pit?  Yeah that one.  It’s getting smaller…so I’m on the right track.  🙂

Anyhoo….gotta drop the boy off at school then get to working!

See ya later

Cathy