This day has been brought to you by the letters L and A and...

I have successfully and rather accidentally wasted an evening after having VERY good intentions. I really need to get work done on my thesis and despite my actual looking forward to doing some solid work tonight I have nothing to show for it.

Yes I made muffins while making supper, but really, it was not what i planned. I slept in, went to work and then worked over some of my lunch so I could go take a step and sculpt class at 430 and theoretically be on the bus and home by 6. Yeah...more like 715 with our fun bus schedule. I liked the sculpt part of the class but the step part of it had a lot of really complicated moves and stuff and I really didn't quite get the groove until it was done...but it felt good to work out. It didn't help that once I got home I learned that I and many friends did not get tickets to an event we'd been planning for and by the time I got back around to being in a state of mind to do anything it is time to go to bed. I also get the fun of telling J when he gets home that our summer plans are rather snafu'd. I am dissapointed. This was a few years in the planning...and may not happen anymore. NOt sure if I should book time off and start planning and putting $$$ into something or just call it off...

LAME.

Bit of a washout day really...

Time for bed. Tomorrow is another day.

'night.

Well hello there adrenaline. How I've missed you :)

Oh lordy. What I can do. I love it. :)

Last night after work I went over to the gym and had a nice workout. Some shoulder weights, pushups, dive bombers, squat leg lifts, abs and time on the bike. I felt AMAZING afterwards. I had a gong show of a bus ride getting home (took over an hour) but got home and made an awesome healthy bento supper of sticky rice balls (heart shaped. me hee.) with some ginger pork and broccoli. YUM. By then it was pretty much time to gear up for today, make our lunches and then get to bed. Working out after work was fun but the bus schedule transition sucks horribly, making for a short evening at home. Good day though. :)

This morning I got up and came in for my spin and sculpt class. I stayed easy on the tension and watched my knee in the lunges and I think it went OK. Lucky me, there were 60 pushups as part of the workout today. Oh my arms...jello! I feel really good though. I've had breakfast and now it's time for one kick-ass day - I'm all fired up. I have to finish up a few things for the end of the month at work, but I have so much energy :) I'm hoping it carries with me.

A coworker had a great idea yesterday and I'm going to try and incorporate it - instead of getting up stupidly early every day, one way I could get more sleep is to workout some days at noon and just get up stupidly early tuesday and thursday for my spin and sculpt class (I like it a lot). Normally I'd go try out the lunchtime bootcamp class here on campus, but it's hard to get there and back and workout all in 1 hour. The beauteous thing about my new job, which I'd forgotten about, is it's more managerial, which means flextime. Which means if I came in 30 minutes early or stayed 30 minutes late I theoretically *could* work out at lunch a few days a week. There are also a lot of shorter workouts I could do at home some days that take less than 30 minutes like Zuzanna's ZWODS or some DVDs I have, so I'm going t try and mix it up a bit and see how to stay active and still get more sleep.

Any suggestions?

I leave you with an old favourite chilled song of mine. IT came up on the ipod this AM on the long dark bus ride...mades me smile :) Have a good day!

Monday already...

Today I slept in, due to a late night. J is working late, so I am going to go workout and then go home. I'm not sure if I will like it, but it will help me get some activity into my day. The counsellor I'm seeing wants me to put equal attention towards getting more sleep - to cut back workouts if need be to 3 days a week. While I balked at this initially I then began to wonder why it bothered me so much. I couldn't workout from healing up from a strain anyways until a few days ago. So...I am torn. For her it was the lack of sleep thing not the exercise thing...I want both. I am trying to figure out how to make that happen. I don't know. For now I'm going to try this mondays and do spin and sculpt and boot class...then figure out what to do to be active on the weekends. Usually I'd just go for walks and not count it as an official workout but winters here it is so easy to hibernate and do nothing...being out int he cold is no fun at all. It's challenging. I may ask her why only 3 days a week when I see her. I don't see why I couldn't sleep in 3o minutes on 2 days a week and just cut back workouts.

Then I wonder why it bothers me at all.

Hmmm.

This weekend I tried a new recipe - butternut squash and spinach curry. Very healthy and yummy. I also broke out the bread maker and made some delish whole wheat bread for us. I'm going to focus on eating healthy, especially if I will be working out less...it means I have to change my caloric intake a bit. It's all very wierd.

We shall try this moderation thing and see how getting more sleep helps. I may need to go to bed earlier if I want to get up to workout. These are all adjustments to look at.

You never know :)

If all else fails, it's only until I am done my thesis...then my schedule reboots again.

Wierd.

Feeling groovy

Yesterday was cool. I got to spend all day on a government committee helping them draft ideas for the new laws that will govern use and transport of biohazards and toxins.
Did I mention that I love my new job?
:)
I didn't workout yesterday, as I didn't come in to campus for anything. I didn't workout this AM, but it was for a good reason I think. Last night the crew of us that gather to throw great gatherings (we call ourselves Enchanted Groove, after our first big "thing") gathered. Not to plan, but to talk about what we want to do as a group. Why *we* are there and what we get out of it. At the end, over beer we all went around and talked about what we appreciated/liked about each other and how we all fit in to the group. Talk about your warm fuzziness. There were actual tears...it's a really cool thing to be a part of a group like this. We are half guys half girls, and while J and I are the oldest by a year, a few others are close to our ages and the rest are younger by about 10 years. But we all "fit" and we are all different with different skills and ideas who all love to come together for the joy of music and making other people happy.
I always give without expecting a thanks and for the joy it brings me. To hear back from people that what I do matters. That they notice?
I feel great :)
The downside of it all was we got home about midnight. Rather than spend a long meeting today struggling to be awake, I thought getting 6 whole hours of sleep would be a good thing. So I slept in, made some protein oats with a banana and came in to work ready for the day. We might go out dancing tonight...we'll play it by ear. And this weekend is thesis time. I think I'm ready for an attack...
I have another counselling session today. I'm looking forward to it. I'm hoping this will really be the year of positivity. Keeping a gratitude journal has been forcing me to appreciate different things and be more positive this week-I thought it was kind of corny to begin with but I'm seeing the benefit now.
Have a great weekend you guys :)

Reunited and it feels so good

Well well. After a nice evening visiting with Dad and the family and a nice supper out, I crawled out of bed at the "normal" time and got in to work out again. The cats were sufficiently confused, but happy to see me back up at the proper earliest possible feeding time :) 5:20 comes very early...

I wasn't sure what to do after so long off and didn't want to backfire and hurt myself so I didn't go to bootcamp like regular wednesdays. It looked like there's a new instructor and I'm really excited to be in there next week. She had steps and the spin bikes and all kinds of things and had them yelling and counting down and really into it, all working hard...I kept looking in there wistfully, but I know I would have done some damage to myself after so long away, and my knee needs a bit of easing into things I can tell. I made up a workout that was heavy on upper body with bicep curls, tricep extensions, chest presses, shoulder raises, some ab stuff and some one legged deadlifts. I did a few squats with no weights to see how my knee would like it and it seemed to be alright, altho it got stiff after 2 sets so I stopped at that and hopped onto he bike for 25 minutes of HIIT biking and then hit the showers. Man it feels good to just be in to do something. I admit I wasn't full out hard core, but I was there, doing things and I know if I'm smart about it I can slowly ramp my way back up to where I was. The jiggle I feel will fade and I'll be back to the usual me. I have a meeting/training thing tomorrow off campus all day so I won't be in to the gym at all, so I will likely do a home workout tomorrow...perhaps my trusty old ball workout DVD or the Women of Power bellydance DVD. We shall see how it feels...so far so good :)

Tonight Dad is staying with us so I won't get a lot of thesis work done, but it should be a nice evening. I'm hoping to hole up a bit this weekend and get some solid writing done. I've put my personal life first lately, which has been glorious, but there's been not a lot of thesis work accomplished. I have another meeting with my new counscellor on friday so I'm hoping she can help me figure out a balance in my mind and go with it...i's tricky.

Hope you all have a great day. I'm off to the lab :)

wohoo

Today I feel...normal. No aches. My back feels OK and my knee is OK too. (Knock on wood)
Tomorrow I think I'll come in for an easy workout and do some swimming thursday. I've been missing it. I admit it has been nice to come in to work early, and have time for a hot breakfast (mmm...oatmeal with an egg whipped in and maple syrup) but I really feel jiggly :) It will be good to sweat a bit...I feel like I'm neglecting myself.

My Dad is coming into town for some errands and we are going out for supper for his birthday next week since he is in town. It will be good to see him for a little bit...I must run. Lots to do...

Have a great day!

Hear me baby hold together

Hmmm...I was going to come in to work out this AM with my knee being back to normal, but somehow on friday night I slept wrong on *something* and my left shoulder blade has a wicked kinky lump in it...so I didn't work out today. I don't have a full range of motion and it hurts off and on. I put heat packs on it over the weekend and I'm hoping it will will work it's way out today...I'm worried I would really hurt myself if I tried to workout now. It feels a bit better today. Man...I'm falling apart! :)

Instead I slept in a bit and made up some oatmeal with an egg whipped in, with a bit of maple syrup, milk and banana and came in to work a bit early. I figure I might as well use my time well. I had a relaxing weekend. Made lots of tasty food (including some of the best pizza I have ever made, some cheese rolls and pumpkin peanut butter soup...oh man). Relaxed a lot with J and really felt like a "normal" weekend. Those have been so very very rare. It was exactly what the 2 of us needed. I feel very centred and other than the whole random shoulder thing, I'm ready for another week.

Hope you all have a great day. I'm going to hunt down a cup of coffee and get ready for a day of poking around the old chemistry pharmacy building on campus inventorying cool old machines. I love that kind of stuff...should be fun!
Cheers.

Thank goodness it's friday

Ah. Finally friday.
I've enjoyed my leisurely week of sleeping in a bit and getting up to a healthy breakfast. Coming in early to work has been nicely relaxing too. Thankfully my knee feels pretty much normal today, so by monday I can come in for a workout again. Which is good. I feel very thick around the middle. The thing I appreciate about my workouts so much is they give me more energy, but they also give me a bit of leeway as far as what I can eat on a daily basis. Without that balance I'm finding that I eat more than I should for being less active...and am not burning it off. I definitely could not keep this up long term, or I would find my horizons rapidly expanding :).

It was so cold this week that our car battery died. Spent most of yesterday getting it towed somewhere so that it can have the battery swapped out this morning. It will be nice having it back. It should be good the rest of the winter from now on. I can get around and do my thing by bus but J works out where there is pathetic bus service and it takes him over an hour to get to work by bus...not practical at all.

I am quite tired this morning for reasons I do not understand...but thankfully I just have to make it through friday and I can relax a bit. Tonight J has a a show to work so I will work some on my thesis (do I know how to rock a friday or what?) and then do some work on the weekend too. A friend of mine has invited me out for a weekend of snowshoing and it sounds lovely...but I just can't right now. I have to make an effort to try and schedule work into my life. To be present and work on things in my head bit. It will come...slowly but surely.

Must be off. I get to go rummage around the old science building on campus today...should be fun )
Later taters...

Brrr

It is another chilly day. Still on recovery week for my knee. It's not quite there yet...I'm giving it this week to be better. I may do some weights at home for my upper body the rest of the week with my 8 Lb freeweights and bands just so I stop feeling so lazy :).

I must say this extra sleep is glorious. I got 8 hours last night...can't recall the last time I did that on a weeknight. :)
Today is healthy foods and lots of thesis work.

Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Well hello winter. Where've you been?

Another day of no workouts. My knee feels almost normal. Hooray. I am hopeful that another day or 2 of rest will do the trick. I may get back to swimming at first to ease into things. All I know is I need to get at something as I seem to be plumping up a wee bit. It's only a few pounds so far...but I know me and know I need to look after it before it becomes 10. If I keep things in check I'll be OK :)
It's -46 with the windchill this morning. I dug out my ski pants to wear to the bus this MA and I'm glad I did - the bus broke down and we had to wait outside for a while for the next one. Brisk :)
Winter is usually like this but it's been so unseasonably mild up to this point (no snow christmas day!) that it takes a bit getting used to since winter arrived on the weekend. It's here tho - must adjust. Time for the mittens and goggles I think.

Must dash. Lots to do on this frozen day.
Have a good one...hope it's warmer where you are :)