Vacation Bullets

August 16, 2010 By 7 Comments

Together – For the first time in 3 years, my husband and I are taking vacation time together.  Over the past 3 years we’ve each taken vacation time apart, but this is the first time we’ve had more than a long weekend together in that time.  We’re not doing anything “special”, it’s a Staycation, but it’s not the where that’s important.  Down time together, quality alone time, is just what the doctor ordered.

Expendable – For the first official Staycation event we went to see The Expendables.  It was everything we expected to be – a non-stop action movie with little to no plot and lots of unbelievable stunts and explosions.  Seriously, the explosives budget alone for this movie had to be several million dollars.  It was a fun movie that just lets you turn your brain off and enjoy.  Stallone is something else for being 64 years old!

BlogHer – I didn’t go to BlogHer, and I don’t know that I ever will, but each year after it’s over I get to reap the benefits in that I’m introduced via bloggers I already follow to new bloggers (new to me) I haven’t read before.  I’ve stocked my Twitter stream and Google reader with more new people in the last two weeks than in the entire last year.  I love finding new people to love, and I’m getting a lot more confident in putting myself out there to interact with them.  Someday I might even work up the nerve to go to BlogHer myself, but honestly I’m not sure that I’d ever fit in.  We shall see.  Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the new reads and if I haven’t introduced myself to you yet I will soon.

Home Gym – Jason and I have been building quite a home gym, but we’re running out of room.  We’ve reached the stage where we have to get rid of something to bring something new in, and wouldn’t you know it – we found something new we want.  I’d link it, but I can’t find it anywhere online.  It’s a smith machine with cables and junk sort of like this one only way better.  The problem is that we have a 1,000 SF house.  It’s small, but it’s good for us, at least until we try to fit this kind of stuff in here and not have the whole house look like a gym.  So far we’ve been able to fit everything into the garage with the exception of my treadmill which is in the office, but now something must go.    The other problem is that my husband is a bladesmith and still uses the garage as his shop, and all of this exercise equipment is slowly choking out the knifemaking equipment.  That smith machine is hugantious, and it’s going to make knifemaking difficult.  A 370 lb anvil doesn’t exactly scoot in and out of a corner very easily.  It’s a puzzle that we’re working on, trying to decide if it’s worth it.

That’s all I’ve got!  I guess I have 4 bullets left for when the madness comes, LeSombre style.

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Sunday Bullets

June 13, 2010 By 10 Comments

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme: I finally planted my herbs!  It seems like the cold weather has gone on forever, and I didn’t want to plant them only to have them freeze so I waited.  Hubs and I mixed up a lovely concoction of soil, compost, manure, and peat and I planted them.  It makes me happy to have fresh herbs growing outside my kitchen window.  I still need to get some tomato plants, but that and some flowers are going to be the extent of my gardening this year.  I’m just too busy and I’m concentrating on other things.

Alone Again, Naturally: Hubs is gone again for the week.  I have to say I’m not a fan of out-of-town jobs.  We work together, so we are together ALL the time.  Most people would hate that, but we’ve made it work.  This? Is the opposite of that.  I know there are people who do this all the time and it works for them, but I used to be a military wife and would go through this for months on end.  I’ve done my time.

9 to 5: Speaking of work, Staycation is over and I’m going back to work tomorrow.  I’m not looking forward to mucking out my in-box, but I have to say that deleting my work email account from my phone during vacation was the best plan ever.  I actually took time  off without looking at or thinking about work stuff.  I highly recommend doing that if you’re going on vacation and your personal phone is also used for work.

10: The first three months of the fitness plan are over and I crossed over the 10% mark this weekend.  If you’ve ever done Weight Watcher’s you’ll know what I’m talking about.  They give you a key chain for losing the first 10% of your starting weight, and old habits die hard.  It’s a milestone I’ve been looking forward to for the past few weeks when the scale seemed to have a mind of it’s own, so it was nice to reach it at the 12 week mark.  It seems to tie everything up neatly with a bow.   Now I just have to do it 3 more times, but I’m not looking at the big picture right now.  Smaller goals like this keep me going.

Help:  Avitable posted a story about Mindy this weekend and she needs our help.  Please go read her story.  Anything you can do will help.  I know you may see this on many blogs across the internet, but that’s one of the best things about blogging – the ability to get the word out when necessary.

Have a great week everyone!

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Staycation

June 10, 2010 By 9 Comments

I’m on vacation, bitches!

It’s been a long time since I took more than a long weekend for vacation that didn’t involve knocking me out and crutches, so this week I said screw it I’m taking some time for me.  Hubs is working out of town and the boy is hardly ever home anymore now that he has wheels and a debit card.  It was the perfect time for some real alone time, which for me never happens.  Like in 20 years, it’s never happened.

I had all these grandiose plans of things I could do like a really thorough spring cleaning, painting the hallway and living room because I’m tired of the color, or a lot of yard cleanup that needs to happen.

Who was I kidding?  This is me we’re talking about.  While my house is not cluttered or dirty (dusty does NOT count as dirty), it’s not a candidate for the white glove treatment either.  I am not June Cleaver, and no amount of free time is going to turn me into her.  It’s just not a priority for me, and I can think of 1.000 things that would be better uses of my time.

What did I do instead?

Ok, I cleaned a little.  But only my drawers and a little of the closet. Things were getting entirely out of hand in there and I needed to cull the herd of holey underwear.

I bought a bike.

I’ve been running, but my knees reminded me that while I’ve lost some weight, it’s not nearly enough for them to be happy with being the bearer of high-impact me.  I remembered that I weighed about 20 – 25 lbs less than I do now when I started running the last time, so I need to be patient and wait.

A friend let me borrow his wife’s bike and we went on a ride together to see what I thought, and I loved it.  My hooch didn’t love it, it was angry for days and normally I wouldn’t be ok with that.  But riding that bike was fun.  And it got me moving outside, which is really important to me.  I am a summer girl and the thought of spending my summer fitness time in the garage on my elliptical just about made me cry.  I need to be outside because I don’t know if you noticed, but that winter lasted forever.

So I researched and shopped and sat on bikes and I finally picked one I liked and I brought her home and called her George.  Well not George, she doesn’t really have a name yet except Bike.  Bike and I have had two rides now, and I can tell you we are officially an item.

I discovered the Runmeter app for iPhone, and Bike and I have used it to track our rides.  I didn’t know when I first used it that you can set it for different activities, so the results say “run” when they should have said “cycle.”  But you get the idea.  I am in love with this app!  No more need to covet a chunky Garmin wrist GPS for running, I can just use the app.  It stores all of your past runs/rides so you can compare notes on past rides.  I haven’t tried it, but you’re also supposed to be able to run the iPod at the same time this runs in the background.

Yesterday I took a drive up to Tahoe.  My original intent was to spend the day photographing the lake, but it was kind of cold and windy up there and I found I was just really enjoying the drive.  I never get to drive up there because it’s pretty twisty and hubs gets sick if he doesn’t drive.

It was a beautiful day, if you were inside a warm car.  I drove for hours and just listened to music and chilled.  I love a good drive.  I did discover that you can get from the top of Spooner Summit to the bottom in just about the time it takes for Iron Man to play if you aren’t afraid of going fast on the curves and you have to pee really, really bad.  Thankfully the highway patrol was busy with someone else when I blew past him.

I still have tomorrow by myself and then it’s a regular weekend.  This time has been good.  I really needed it and even though I haven’t done anything really exciting, I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do at the time.  That’s pretty awesome by itself.

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