Glad the water weight's gone, Jessica. You put your body under some stress during the tri so it had to react.

Two full work days here. Beginning to think I could crack one of these projects. Such a good feeling.

And a revelation! I don't get enough exercise during school holidays. I'm busy, I get tired, I don't burn as many calories. There are five more weeks. I'd better come up with something.

Gymn OK today. Food good. Got to sleep now.

Wow, lots to catch up on. Busy, busy.. Jess, congrats on your tri! and saef, I'm so happy you saw a specialist and have some hope now. Good things all around!

I officially started half marathon training again today. Which means, unless by some miracle of miracles, I am pretty much done-o on the losing weight front for the next 12 weeks. Not that I ever lost anything but the same 3 lbs over and over again. Wait, isn't that what they call maintenance?

Hi guys
We are on vacation in Upstate NY, did I just see you Saef? Prob not, my 4 boys do not allow me to go looking for antiques. But they did just have a horse riding lesson! I walked along after them during the hilly trail ride. Kinda pooped by the end, watching for tree roots, ground hogs and horse plops...

I think my travel scale is about 2 lbs heavier than home but really not exactly sure. I am fighting to keep it below 128/9. Today 125.5 woohoo!

internet up now, so will be checking in with you chicks

Hi, all!

152.0 today. I made a major mistake - completely without thought grabbed a handful of M&Ms that spouse and kid were eating. Wham - color allergy and 4 pounds up, plus facial hives, in under two hours.

Somehow, somewhere ... it's gotta get through my thick head that artificial reds and greens just can't be allowed. Why M&Ms ... when I can have truly outstanding, premium dark chocolate with no ill effects and far more satisfaction?

Placeholder post: Tuesday.

FP - you *are* a maintainer. Fab work. And you'll be a fab marathoner.

KC - ah! Nature. That's what it's like, friend.

Becky - oh dear! I know you know Not To Do That. Eternal vigilance.

Busy and social day today. Full and long work day tomorrow. One of my projects is such fun for me that I can't wait to get stuck in tomorrow. Barcelona and Catalan beckon (electronically). I shan't get bored, I'll just eat packed food & it'll be good.

150.5 - in the "recovery" phase.

SB - Sigh. Yes, eternal. Practice, practice, practice. Hope your full work day passes swiftly and productively!

kitty - congrats on the low numbers while on vacation! We're leaving next week for a heavy hiking/camping excursion "out West" - Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone, Tetons, Custer Battlefield, Devil's Tower, Scott's Bluff, etc, and if I do half as well as you, I'll be thrilled!

Going to be a bit of a wild ride for the next week - looks like I'm working Sunday at our sister plant 2 1/2 hours away, and I have LOTS to do before we leave next Thursday. Including - buy wedding gift, get shoes for the dress, get new hiking boots, pack, build healthy menu list for cooler (hey ... do we have a sticky for good "car trip" recipes?), get hiking shoes for kidlet, get car chargers for batteries, iPods and Nintendos, load e-books into iPod ...YAHHHHH!!!!

Saef- It's great to have a diagnosis! I just spent a week at the Mayo clinic trying to get one for some mobility problems she's having. I find that once I know what is bothering me I can start to make a plan and have expectations about what's coming.

ICUWishing - I just drove from Minnesota to Baltimore and had the same dilemma. An earlier car trip to Atlanta went well when I packed lots of crunchy plain vegetables. Broccoli, baby carrots, I also roasted beets and brought them in a Tupperware container. The plain vegetables taste plain, but in a car you aren't usually hungry, just bored, so it helps with damage control. Then when we stopped I'd often do subway or some other place to get a simple turkey sandwich as my actual "meal".

kittycat - You have a travel scale, I love it! For the last week I had no idea and I'm a daily weigher.

So for the last three days I've been at my five pound goal of 163. I'm having trouble deciding if it "counts"! I hit that number a few weeks ago, then back up, then hit it again, and the last three days it's stayed at 163 or 162, but I've also been sick and not eating much Monday and Tuesday. What do you all think? Does it count? Am I there?

mahalia - thanks! Raw veggies definitely make the list (celery w/hot salsa -yum!), and fruit, Clif bars, etc. And oh boy, a case of sugarless gum. There's going to be a lot of camping involved, so it will be a bit of a challenge to sidestep the bad food. At least there will be a LOT of hiking.

151.0 - but barely. It wanted to be 150.5 again. I'm going to use my road trip time to think about some new fitness goals. I know one of them for sure - to be able to touch my toes. I can start working on that one right now.

I'm back from nearly a week away, and holding off weighing till Friday morning, so I don't know what happened while I was gone.

When I stay with my mother in Upstate NY, there's a nice little gym in the village, which I use every morning, so I hope that limited any damage from having less control over all my meals & not cooking for myself much. This gym began well but has gotten a little bit worn, with some squeaky & broken equipment. It has cardio upstairs, machines & free weights downstairs, and there's a bit of a gender divide in where you find the two sexes generally working out. I rarely see women in the free weight section, though they do work those machines in decent numbers. So on my weight days, at the time at which I chose to use the gym every day, I was the only woman with four or five guys working alongside me. (That never happens at my "home" gym.) I felt self-conscious: I didn't want to let down my gender by not working hard enough. But I wish their weight set was more complete: I like the 17.5 pound and 22 pound weights.

My meals were pretty good, with some wavering. I ate out three times. Once it was seared Ahi tuna on a seaweed salad; another time it was plain chicken breast with roasted vegetables; and a third time, it was Red Lobster, where I had grilled trout with broccoli & asparagus (which I wish they didn't serve soaked in melted butter & should have headed off that mess before it happened).

So I'm suspecting a gain of a pound or holding steady.

I took Meclizine to control the vertigo each day, but it makes me sleepy in the afternoon as it wears off. A little bit more of my hearing came back in my left ear, though not much. Now I hear electronic auto-tune voices humming in the left ear when people talk & my own voice echoes weirdly when I am speaking.

Kitty, how deep into Upstate NY did you go? I was pretty far in there, surrounded by dairy farms, and right up on Lake Ontario for one lovely afternoon, sitting on a stone wall at the Sackett's Harbor battlefield.

Chicks, I woke up last night realizing I had typed incorrect info. Travel scale likely 2 lbs LIGHTER than home. Doh! All those congrats were undeserved, just staying accountable and letting you all know too

Mahalia, just keep weighing and you'll know. Re the scale, it is my family's lake cabin so I just keep it here. Last summer I brought it and while those vaca creep pounds did occur I was able to stay a bit better in control
Silver, packed food is lovely for its built in portion control
Becky, have fun on vacation. sounds great
Jess, second tri is this weekend, right?
Midwife, hugs for you.
Pat, painting complete?
FP, I want to join you in half marathon training. No, I will join you
All unmentioned or unnoticed d/t lurking, hellooooooo!

today I am going to learn how to pickle with my neighbor. She is awesome

Saef, cross posted! I am on NY side of Berkshire mountains. HEAVENLY
Welcome back to a home controlled setting
Re: your hearing that actually sounds frustrating as heck and darned uncomfortable. I am no audiologist, but does that mean things are closer to improving? My angels are flying around you in cyberspace wishing you complete recovery.

Kitty, it's really weird for me to get muffled, electronic synthesisor-like sounds through the left ear, and I'm not sure right now that it's better than hearing nothing, particularly with that echo distorting how I hear my own voice when I'm speaking. But I suspect it's an improvement.

If you go to the Blue Plate in Chatham for dinner, please eat a plate of bouillabaisse for me. That's what I used to order when spending the weekend with my good friends in Kinderhook. (Sadly, that house was sold as part of the spoils of an acrimonious divorce, so I don't have the pleasure of being a house guest up in Columbia County on summer weekends anymore.)

I envy your kids going horseback riding. I need to get back up on a horse again sometime. (It's something I said I'd do if I lost weight.)

My spoils from antiquing Upstate include two Staffordshire figurines & a really big old Blue Willow platter. I mean, really big. The thing is 20 x 16. You could serve a roasted toddler on top of it. (Not that I plan to do that -- I'm thinking more like hanging it on the wall in my kitchen, like a painting.)

A fly-by. Good to see you saef and sound(er). And you too, KC. Upstate NY sounds lovely and rather civilised. I'll come over as I've had enough of roughing it here in the Olde Worlde.

Too busy. Resentment. Food. Cronky shoulder.

Friday is another day.

SB - I love your concise, pithy summaries of your days!

Kitty - yes, painting done, but the rain is not. Sigh.

New meds have put me semi-out of action for the past 2+ weeks. I am starting the 3rd week, and am now at the intended dose. Gave me lots of nausea/headache, resulting in a lot of lethargy and low appetite (that was the only good side effect ). I had two good days this week before I upped the dose last night, but today is not nearly as bad as when I first started, leading me to hope that my body has adjusted. I did a lot of "research" on myself to find out how soon after taking the meds I felt bad, and then timed it so I take the meds around 6pm and the side effects don't kick in til I'm in bed, or nearly so. Then the worst is over by the time I wake up and I can have a decent day. Thank goodness it's not a "take with food" thing.

Anyway that and the weather are boring topics. But I'm doing nothing exciting. Hope to be back to more exercise than mild cardio soon. DH is leaving for 10 days on Monday, so I'm getting him ready.

As I thought, a slight gain registered on the scale this morning. I'm up 1.1 pounds from my vacation. How I knew this, even before weighing, is that these days, I can nearly always tell from looking at my feet -- if they appear less veiny & tendon-y on top -- & my stomach, which loses the vertical dent down the middle.

I need to do something interesting this weekend. When I reunited with a dear old friend while Upstate, and she asked me, "So what do you do, other than work & work out?", I was at a loss for a moment. Not good. Same thing happened when she asked me what my longer-term goals & dreams were. I said "Travel" but I should have said the truth, which is: "Better-looking abs, thighs and arms." But that answer was going to make me look shallow and appearance-obsessed. And would reveal that life has narrowed down a lot since we were undergraduates together with very lofty ideals. Anyway, it's a sign for me that I've been neglecting certain parts of my life. And has given me a lot to think about over the past few days.