Yay for a new month! We're getting closer to spring.
DH left for the airport at 3:45 am and I was up with him, so now I'm staring at my computer and feeling like someone hit me over the head with a 2 x 4. Ugh, this is going to make for a long day. I'm not usually a napper, but may have to today!
It was a cold and quiet weekend for us. I've been cleaning out the basement laundry room, which is where everything ends up. My car is packed with stuff for the Salvation Army, which is where it should have gone in the first place instead of sitting in the basement for a year.
I made a leg of lamb last night with mustard sauce, a big tradition in DH's family though I'm not much of a lamb eater. But I bought the lamb was from a local farm (where I'm sure the little lambs all happily frolic in the clover ) and it was the best lamb I've ever eaten, by far. So tender, so flavorful but not strongly flavored. Wow, amazing difference! I wish I could find similar local farms for chickens or beef. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.
After a make a batch of chicken-black bean chili today, the freezer will be fully stocked. Off to plan the day in Fitday, have another mug of coffee, and then hit the gym. It's funny how Mondays are so much more crowded than Fridays in the gym!
Yay :banana: for spring indeed.
I'm working from home today because of a lot of snow. it looks pretty but I do hope the road will be cleared before tomorrow.
I'm sitting next to flowerpots with blooming bulb flowers at home, and enjoying the sight and smell.
New month, new resolve. January is behind me and so are the post holiday blahs. I have a doctor's appointment next Saturday and I'm going to seriously consider anxiety medication as a short term boost to getting things back on track.
All the things I have been doing are not working so I have to find new things!
I signed up for a prepared meals thing called Supperworks. You pre-select entrees, which have calorie counts, preparation instructions, and suggested sides.
Then you go there and they have all the ingredients prepared for you. You put your entrees together into containers and take them home and freeze them. Then thaw and use.
I also ordered a slow cooker and two of the entrees I selected are for that.
This just might be the way to get to that Sunday afternoon yoga class I've been wanting to try. Usually I am chained in the kitchen cooking dinner on Sunday afternoons.
It's going to be a cold, clear day here, just what I like. I will probably cry when I take out my last group today (the dog that died last week was in it) so I'll be glad to have sunglasses.
Meg, I've noticed that, too, about Mondays at the gym (which is where I'm going once I get off the computer). Thursday are a great time to go to my gym. Do you have a local farmer's market in the spring/summer? Ours has people taking orders for beef, etc. that's locally grown.
Rabbit, what kind of bulbs did you force? How cool to have blooming flowers when it's snowing outside.
Dagmar, the prepared dinner thing sounds good. Takes the guessworks out of meals. Good luck!
Wardhog, kudos on making it through the family birthday party!
My DH and I are both trying to lose 15 pounds this year. I lost 2.5 in January, going to the gym and working out for an hour, really watching my food intake. He started walking 15 minutes around his work during the day and lost 3 lbs.
OUr spay/neuter campaign started on Saturday, and we signed up 52 animals (mostly cats, which are the biggest problem) for spay and neuter. Yay! A good start, but I hope we pick up the next four Saturdays.
I found a turkey carcass in the freezer this morning. I had totally forgotten about it! so tomorrow I'll buy all the ingredients for a good turkey soup. Yum.
This weekend, DH and I drove to LA and spent the night. DH's friend had been invited to show some of his artwork at a gallery and it was the artist's reception that night. It featured 5 artists, but it was our friend who's art was on the advertisement! It was a nice night but I feel like I"ve had my weekend robbed from me. I had to drive both ways (of course) and that just makes me wired. We got home about 1 PM Sunday and I was so tired after having had a bad night's sleep. I managed to get to the grocery store for a few items to get us through for a day or so. I'm going to take a half-day off work tomorrow to finish things that normally I would have done on the weekend.
So I tried DH's elliptical this morning. I've decided that 45 minutes on the treadmill is difficult with trying to get DH to work and come home and get DS to school. So 20 minutes on the elliptical this morning was a lot better. The time just sailed by! I managed to maintain 5.3 mph which is pretty good for the whole 20 minutes (IMO).
Good morning everyone! I'm a little stressed out today because I have to put together a presentation to give at a conference this weekend, and it just occurred to me that I can't just use any random images from the internet, I have to actually make sure I get ones that are free to use or produced by my company. That makes it a lot harder! And WikiMedia sadly has very few images related to flow cytometry. :sigh:
Meg, check out http://www.localharvest.org. It's a site that lists farmers markets and farms, and you can search by your city. I bet you can find some producers that way! I would warn you though that a lot of the time with small-scale beef producers you need to buy at least 1/4 of a cow. It's a good idea to split with friends though.
Rabbit, aren't forced bulbs nice? DH (the gardener in our family) had some paperwhites going a couple weeks ago and it looks like we'll have amaryllis soon.
Dagmar, sorry about the dog. I have heard of those supper prep places, you'll have to let us know how it goes!
Ward, good job on the birthday party! I had a birthday party to go to last Friday, but didn't do as well as you. MIL usually has at least some healthy options, but not that time. She served a salad, which was fine except that she put mayonnaise in the balsamic vinaigrette (who DOES that?). Then the main course was a cheese souffle and a puree made from sweet potatoes, parsnips, peanuts, and like 2C of whipping cream. Homemade cheesecake for dessert. I kept my portion sizes small and ended up still hungry when I got home, but I was pretty irritated about the lack of any healthy food.
Sheila, that sounds like a great start for the spay and neuter campaign!
Allison, turkey soup sounds yummy!
This week is my last week of swim classes and my last week of NRLW. Of course I have a meeting scheduled when I usually do my Thursday NRLW. I'll plan to go to the gym Saturday to do it instead.
Sheila - I forced small daffodils and hyacinths. the hyacinths have the nice smell.
Dagmar - re: anxiety. I use st johns wort, that is an OTC herbal preparation. Does not work for everyone but works for me. Also, doing the mindfullness thing worked for me in getting it under controll.
Dagmar, I’m so sorry about one of you dogs. I know my animal behaviorist would be so sad if I had to put one of my pups to sleep so I can only imagine how hard that would be.
Michele, MACS rarely crash. I have had mine lock up twice and I can pinpoint what I was doing and it had been my fault both times. But computers can crash, mac or not. I’m surprised it ate her hard drive. My guess that is what failed. Is it still under warranty? Apple could probably take the HD and recover the data.
Sznn, congrats on the 2.7 loss. Way to GO!!!
Meg, we leave for Cancun on Saturday and the surgeries are scheduled for next Wednesday barring no problem on the pre-surgery tests. I’m excited to leave Winterville and head tropical. I’m thinking post-surgery pain will be reduced by pleasant weather.
Eating the little lambies in the pasture??? Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I stare at the baby lambs every spring and love how the run. I’m thinking I could so easily give up the little meat I do eat if I actually saw the chickens.
Rabbit, aren’t indoor flowers the best for winter blahs. My gardenia bloomed last week and it smells heavenly. Out late bloomin’ amaryllis finally opened last week too.
Ward, congrats on escaping without scale injury.
Sheila, is just not fair how much easier it is for men to lose weight than women. But since our brains and hearts are so big, I guess it’s a good compromise.
Allison, way to go on the elliptical. My aerobic capacity went way up after changing the treadmill for the elliptical. I can empathize with weekends shortened by traveling. We had a resting, quiet weekend for the first time since before Thanksgiving. It was heavenly. DH said he was surprised I didn’t push for one last ski adventure before the surgeries. I literally couldn’t be motivated to go anywhere even for the adrenaline rush the mountain gives. Taking a ½ day off is a wise idea so leftovers from this weekend don’t screw up next weekend.
Jessica, when I look for clipart on the internet, type freeware or royalty free in the search option. It helps – there are tons of free ones out there. Wow, I’d have been irritated about the food selection to. It’s not like your MIL didn’t know you’d lost and maintained so much weight.
Hello all - I read the thread this morning, but never posted. Now I'm back... Weird weekend for me. DH ended up working 16 hours Thursday so was worn out on Friday, then had to work on Saturday again. We had DSS this weekend, so he and I were flying solo on a trip to Granny's Saturday. I was oddly sick on Friday, so no exercise. Then no exercise Saturday after the DSS dinner drama... this time he made himself vomit from the panko breaded chicken. Got to the park on Sunday, cleared out a lot of the cobwebs. Trying to have a better week this week.
Meg - I would be feeling a little beaten if I had to get up at 3:45, too! You make the greatest food, it sounds delicious!
Rabbit - your flowers sound beautiful!
Dagmar - the meal service sounds cool. sorry about the puppy.
Ward - good job at the party!
Sheila - definitely a good start to the spay/neuter program. And I see the same thing with DSS - he changes his diet a little, exercises once or twice and drops five pounds.
Allison - turkey soup - yummy. And I'm fond of the elliptical. I find I can easily burn the same amount of calories in less time than the treadmill, and I can't flake out and go easy as easily.
Jessica - copyright laws. Grr... i completely understand and respect the rationale behind them, but get frustrated with the searching for freeware.
My son used to gag on white sauces and gravy. Never quite understood that, but he never went so far as to actually vomit. Lord knows you've got your hands full with your DSS, Shannon. My goodness I hope he grows out of it soon!
Dagmar~as hard as it is to lose your own pet I can imagine it would be equally as bad to lose one of your "clients". 10 really isn't that old, either. We were discussing my aging Lab this weekend and everyone was surprised he's still around (this is from the person who rescued him 14+ years ago).
Shannon - sorry to hear about the food issues with DSS. My kids were always very picky eaters. They are lactose intolerant & have frequent stomach aches. What turned out to work for them is only have extremely simple food that they could recognise, separate meat & sauce (sauce is icky, anything in sauce will not be eaten), and no cooked vegetables. DS & DD still mainly live on cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce, carrot & bell pepper for veggies. Also, little kids only need very little food. If there is regular soda, or fruit juice, there is already a lot of sugar in there that keeps them going, and skinny kids are normal (FYI DS has been about 4% BF as a small child). Can you clearly see ribbs on his back?
I haven't posted here in ages, partly because I don't have frequent access to a computer anymore and partly because I'm embarrassed that I still haven't lost my pregnancy weight and my child is almost 18 months old! I got back up to 234 after Christmas but I'm happy to report that I weighed 220 this morning (I can't believe I'm happy with that number!) At this point, I'm "sort of" making an effort but I confess that I haven't fully committed. The only thing I've fully committed to is becoming a vegetarian (I did that on January 7), and that wasn't for weight loss reasons.
I joined a training team at the Y for a big 10k in Richmond (4th biggest in the U.S., I believe). It was my first race 3 years ago when I first got into running. It's so hard to struggle with short distances like 2 miles when a few years ago I was running 10+. I hate being on the other end of the spectrum again, with the coaches looking at me like I'm kind of sad, when really I should be one of the coaches!! I know more about running than they do, but when you're overweight people assume you know nothing. Losing 110 pounds and running a half marathon and coaching cross country a couple of years ago are meaningless to other people because I'm 55 pounds away from my goal. Ugh!
Anyway, I've come back many times and then stopped posting again, but I hope to keep up with it this time because I know I need the support of 3FC to finally get back to goal and get healthy again. I'll try to keep up with the thread but it's hard because I only have access to a computer for an hour or two in the evening, and not every evening!!
Maintainers Chat: Week Of February 1- 7
) and it was the best lamb I've ever eaten, by far. So tender, so flavorful but not strongly flavored. Wow, amazing difference! I wish I could find similar local farms for chickens or beef. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough. 
and 
I have heard of those supper prep places, you'll have to let us know how it goes!
I'll plan to go to the gym Saturday to do it instead.
