Humor, Planet Fitness, Uncategorized

My Cold Hard Facts

I was just stating a week or two ago how I had stayed fairly well through the winter when everyone around me was getting quite sick with colds and flu. Well, the universe has a sense of humor and suddenly BAM! I am sick. If that wasn’t coincidence enough, on Easter Sunday I watched the movie The Son of God and Monday morning my Sharp plasma t.v. wouldn’t turn on. Here I am sick and my t.v. stops working.  I can say with all honesty, Son of God were not the words that came out of my mouth.

I haven’t been able to make it to Planet Fitness since last Thursday and after the way I ate over the holiday weekend, that is certainly a shame.  Burgers and Cadbury eggs were not a part of my lifestyle change. Hopefully I will be able to work out and get my sense of humor back later in the week.  😉

How has your week been?

Humor, Uncategorized, Weight Loss

Tequila – It can make you dance…

I am typically an early riser who heads to bed well before any Fairy Godmother could show up to change my world. At 9:00 P.M. it is lights out. It is rare for me to go out during the week, however, last Thursday I decided to break my standard rule – Never go out in the middle of the week…

I met up with a friends for a low-low key evening: drinks and a few laughs. I decided to keep food to a minimum during the day so I could cheat on a plateful of chicken nachos.  I was even careful to keep my drinks fairly low-calorie –  flavored vodka and soda mixed with a little lime.  The drinks were tasty and seemed weak and harmless, that is, until someone bought a round of tequila shots.  I am not much of a drinker beyond wine and vodka, so I do not really understand what went wrong in my judgement, but yes, something did go horribly wrong. After a few cranberry vodka and sodas, coupled with a tequila shot or three, my “low-key” evening turned into a party.  I generally do not dance, I don’t feel that I am good at it, however, tequila told me otherwise.

I awoke Friday morning at 5:40 A.M., turned off my alarm, and then did something that I never do: I rolled back over hoping that some higher power would intervene and I would be well again. At 7:00 A.M. the answer was a firm NO. I managed to head downstairs to the couch where I parked myself for the remainder of the day. I would like to take a moment to shout out to the maker’s of Advil, your efforts have not went unnoticed.

And then, of course, there was St. Patrick’s Day…

Time to get focused again. 😉

 

 

Humor, Instant Pot, Planet Fitness, Uncategorized, Weight Loss

Alive and Cooking

The last few days have been quite busy and although I failed to get any writing in, life just sometimes happens, I did manage to slip in a few workouts. Since I began strength training, I am learning to live with waking up feeling like I have been hit by a truck full of cement going at top speed.  Some days I find myself waking energized and refreshed, other days I wake up wondering if I should be cast into a zombie role on the Walking Dead. I think I need to increase my water intake, work out a little earlier or layout in the beach somewhere in the Caribbean for a month or five. Since the latter is probably not a realistic option at this moment, I will start with increasing my water.

As far a nutrition goes, I am always looking for creative ways to cook chicken in my Instant Pot.  I tend to reach for chicken as my “go to” meat and after a while I find that I am eating the same things over and over. The other night, while stalking my spice cupboard for something different, I noticed a few packets of Lipton Onion Soup mix. Hmmm…I opened up a packet, dumped it on a plate, and rolled boneless chicken thighs in dry the soup mix. I added a cup of water to my IP, put the chicken thighs on the trivet, and then set the time for 13 minutes.  After my IP finished its natural release, I opened up the lid to find absolutely perfect boneless thighs. Fabulous!

Time to hit the gym!

 

 

Humor, Uncategorized

Resorting To Fun

When you live in Western Washington, you learn a deep appreciation for gray skies turning blue. We usually do get a significant amount of rainfall during the winter months but even if it is not pouring down like the Amazon Rain Forrest, it is generally still gray.  Today was a near perfect winter day, sunny and about 60 degrees.  While most people in Western Washington probably broke out their grills and lawnmowers, we broke out our winter coats, boots, gloves and gassed up the car for a trip to the mountains. I say trip, but really it is only a 90-minute drive from my house.

In all of the years that I have lived in Washington State, I had never ventured to Crystal Mountain Resort near Mt. Rainier. I love to explore new places and the fact that they had a gondola ride to a restaurant was just too good to pass up.  When we arrived at Crystal Mountain Resort there were more cars in the parking lots than on Black Friday.  I say ‘lots’ because there were several and they were incredibly far away from the action, so much so that they were picking up skiers and hauling them in on huge seated carts.  Yeah, I could have used the exercise, but I am flat-footed, and I was wearing snow boots that were about as comfortable as an inflamed rash.  Just as I was weighing whether or not this whole process was going to be worth it, we found one open parking spot that, in the grand scheme of things, was a fairly short walk.

We purchased our gondola tickets and got in line to wait our turn to head up the mountain.  I am afraid of heights and I have to admit that I was feeling a bit of anxiety as I observed that the gondolas seemed to head up the mountain and then disappear at the top.  I also began sizing up the structure and thickness of the cable that the gondola was pulled on. I began to realize that I had to put my total trust in the people who put all of this together and hope that they were all sober in the making and installation of this contraption. There is something about blue sky in the great Northwest that will make you risk life and limb for a bit of fun; game on. The ride up was incredible, the view was so spectacular that I didn’t entertain another thought about falling to my untimely death. I don’t know exactly what I thought I was going to see at the top, but the view rendered me breathless. This was a perfect day if ever there was one.