Good morning! No sun here, just lots of wet leaves. It beats snow, though. A friend in Minnesota posted pictures of the weekend snowstorm from her backyard. I'll take wet leaves, than you very much. Pat, you should put the Library Cam in it's own thread so we can find it and feel better about living in the lower 48

Legs and some light cardio for me today. I have to shake loose a couple of pounds that crept on from NO exercise while I was sick.

How is everyone doing this week? Nelie, it's countdown week for you!!!!

Mel

While on my walk today, I stopped in to have a look at our local gym. Rob is very nice, he likes Body for Life and he has a Smith Machine

Visualize Susan checking her bank balance.

Good Morning LWL.

Had a good upper body workout this morning. I increased the weights by five pounds on some of the exercises but could only complete about half the reps in my set. That's okay. It gives me something to work toward.

No cardio today or for the next three weeks. I met with my dr last thursday who was pleased with the progress so far. I guess I really did need the crutches. Who knew..? He still wants me to remain a couch potato for a while. "Take a little vacation," he says. Yeah. Right. Going to the gym is a vacation for me. I've got small children...Okay, enough of the whine.

Susan: Sounds like you had a nice morning. Now, are you drooling over the smith machine or Rob?

Mel: We have the same wet leaves here too. Not a leaf left on our trees in the backyard. It's time for DH and sons to get busy with the rakes. Obviously I get out of this task this year.

Hi All! Starting to feel the pectoral tightness from increasing the weights on my chest presses and fly's on Saturday. I love it!!

Working hard this week at work and at home to reach the culmination on Saturday when we will be flying to Disney World. We are there next week and then coming home on TG Day, which is when it gets crowded there. Hopefully our planning for a low volume time of year is right. At any rate, even if we choose to spend a couple of days at the hotel pool, it will be nice to just get away as a family. It's supposed to be high 70's and sunny which will be a nice change from the terrible days we have here yesterday and today.

BUT, I bought 2 pedometers over the weekend, one for me and dh. I'm interested just to see how many in excess of 10,000 steps I can get in each day that I'm there without trying!!

I think I'm in love...

I opened up a can of pumpkin puree the other day to try to make mel's pumpkin protein bars. I say try because well I had issues, one of them being not spraying the pan and another was "winging it" with the ingredients. I did end up with an interesting pumpkin custard though.

So yesterday, I made protein pancakes with the pumpkin puree. They were good but not a really strong pumpkin taste. DF even ate them while I was gone at the salon.

This morning, I decided to put 1/2 cup of cottage cheese with 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree, a dash of vanilla and a bunch of pumpkin pie spice. IT WAS SO GOOD. I think I found my latest treat. I think I need to go to the grocery store and stoke up on pumpkin puree.

As for me, I did 25 minutes on my elliptical this morning. Felt good but I could tell my body was not happy with me. I think I'm still fighting some bug even though I never fully got sick.

Nelie - Mmmm, that pumpkin mix sounds delish Nelie, will have to try it. Did you add any sweetner? Take care of yourself, this is definitely not the time to get sick!

HRBABE, have a great time. Am sure you'll get your steps in with all different activities there.

Susan....gyms are tempting aren't they?

Lydia, think long term....don't let short term excess make the bad situation worse.

Mel, that looks like quite a workout....hmmmm, as a gadget junkie, the wheel looks tempting....do you really find it useful as a basic tool, or more as an "add-on"?

Well, finally got a good upper body workout in yesterday, and it felt wonderful, but I am feeling it today....my #s have really gone down...need to work up to where I was a few months ago....slowly...so I don't hurt myself.

Tomorrow I am meeting someone for an part time interview to do private training, in a fairly well-to-do area in MD. According to the ad, pay is really good, and they provide liability insurance. I focused my resume on working with the "older adult", which was what seemed to catch his eye. Wish me luck.

Have a great day all...hope your weekends went well.

Susan (am) - I didn't add any sweetener but you can if you want. I was tempted to add some stevia I had sitting in the counter but I found the pumpkin pie spice gave it enough flavor. Also where in MD? I don't know where you live but I know Bethesda has some crazy rich people

Ok, stayed up way too late last night, and while I got up for my workout this morning, I gave up after the warm up and took a nap. laughing at myself, but I was so tired.

Found I have another day to use by the end of the year, so I promptly put in for some deferred maintainence on myself, facial and nails probably since I am not cooking on Thanksgiving day.

SUSAN B - I have the sleepy foot on the elipitical as well, mostly when I got new sneakers, I was tying them too tightly. I think my flu shot made me sleepy, the next day, I crashed about 3 pm for a two hour afternoon nap, luckily DD was already home and I didn't have to pick her up somewhere.

NELIE - size 20's way to go, all that working out those exercises and the reps are definitely meaning success.

MEG - glad to hear I am not the only one going through headsets, like you I prefer the headset to the buds probably because I am on a headset all day long at the office. DH loves his Sennheiser headset and while it is expenisive, at least it works right.

HR - Saw your challange for New Year's - wow. Have a great time at DW.

Off to get the phone.

Liza

Nelie- Pumpkin puree is turning into my salvation, along with flax meal. I've recently discovered that I'm gluten sensitive and have to eliminate all gluten grains- except for brown rice, that's just about everything. Oatmeal is suspect, but I'm eating it anyway. I use pumpkin puree and a tablespoon of flax meal to "bulk up" pancakes, or anything else in which I would have put a wheat containing product.
For example, my new recipe for pancakes is
4 egg whites
1/4 c. pumpkin puree
1/4 c. dry oats
1/4 - 1/3 c. cottage cheese
lots of cinammon and vanilla

Pumpkin puree is wonderful stuff!

Susan (am) - The wheel is definitely a toy. Most clients aren't strong enough to use it properly. It's fun, and if you want a versatile, fairly cheap ab and hamstring alternative which requires some balance, it's great. BUT-- I'm still sore 6 days later from doing full pikes from a standing position, and the "alligator push-up walk". I thought I had pretty strong core muscles! If a client can't hold a plank on the floor for at least 30 seconds, there's no hope of using this. Now that I know how sore I am, I'm a little leary of even having clients try it.

Did an abbreviated leg workout this morning. I'm not as healthy as I thought. I was totally exhausted by about half of what I usually do

Lydia- Glad to hear the leg is healing. Patience (yeah right...listen to who is talking ) Are you getting ready to vacate Columbus for next weekend?

Fran- I'm sure you'll do PLENTY of walking at DW! Good luck with the food.

SusanB- haha! I thought you were a dedicated "at home" workout person! Rob must be quite droolable Smith machines aren't all that exciting.

Mel

Oh no Rob is kinda short and plain. I was drooling over the thought of doing really nice heavy squats.

AH...you are as sick as the rest of us

Is pumpkin puree the stuff you use to make pumpkin pie?

It's catching! I caught it from all of you!

Rocker,
Apparently the grocery store might carry two different things. One is pumpkin pie filling, but I swear I've never seen this. The other is pumpkin puree or I think they might just call it canned pumpkin. I heard the pumpkin pie filling has sugar in it, while the pumpkin puree has none.

Susan,
Yes the thought of drooling over heavy squats is quite sick My physical therapist looks at me funny when I tell her to keep adding more weight on the leg press machine. She really got me good last week though by making me do leg presses, squats, lunges and a host of other exercises, each 30 times.

Hi all.

Had a nice long weekend, with beautiful sunny weather (okay, it was still cold!) Like your idea for the webcam Mel, I'll do it.

Re: last week's discussion on iPods. I have a nano which I came by when I renewed my Audible.com subscription. It's a 1 gb which is more than enough for the music and the C25K podcasts I use at the gym. (I have a 40gb Creative Zen MP3 that I use for audiobooks, which I am addicted to.) Nelie, I got a cute little sportscase for it (25% off ) from Marware. I just looked at their website podplus.com and don't see it, maybe it was marked down at the store because it was discontinued? In any case there are several others on the website. I like mine because it has a clip.

We always have pumpkin puree in my house as I feed it to the cats for the fiber. I'll have tor try adding it to the pancakes. I can always find the plain pumpkin, whereas the pie filling seems to appear only at holidays. And yes, it has sugar and spices already added.

We are leaving again Friday night, this time to New England for Thanksgiving. I swear everytime I take 2 trips so close together that I'm never doing it again. At least this time we're flying first class, courtesy of our airline miles. I'm concentrating more on cardio this week, getting back to the weights when we return on the 27th.