And for my next magical trick

Last night J and I got some more wood and paint so I can build him some speaker shelves for his studio over the next week or so. They may not be too pretty, once they're painted up they should work well for what he needs. I'm flattered that he figures I can build shelves for his studio monitor speakers. Rawr.

This AM I came in to workout and did lower body stuff. I only did about 15 minutes of half assed cardio after my lower body work, since I recieved a text from my mominlaw this morning while working out that she'd somehow miscalculated on the trip and I still owe her some more $$ for the trip for the hotel...grr. I had just spent most of what I thought was "leftover" savings on paint and wood so she will just have to wait a bit until I get paid for the rest of it. I cannot just pull $100 out of my ass. (altho it would be a handy trick wouldn't it?)  Anyways...by the time I'd replied I was just cranky so I tried to ramp up my brisk walking to a sweaty run to shake my cranky pants but after a few minutes I just was done. I had a long shower and came in to work a bit early. Still a bit cranky about it, but such is life.

This evening I'll be priming my dresser, planning these speaker shelves I'm building and practicing pulling money out of my ass. I'll let you know how it all goes down.

Later taters.

Shop till you drop

I came. I saw. I shopped.
Oh lordy - my mother in law is a shopping machine :)
We hit the weather just right on our trip this weekend. The 7 hour drive was just ahead of the monster storm and once we arrived in minot the freezing rain and foot of snow started to fall and blow. But, we were there so it was all good. We drove the in-laws new Ford Flex on the trip and wow... it is FANTASTIC, both to drive and as a winter car. It drove through ice and snow like nothing was even there. We could make it around town to where we wanted to go and then the blizzard conveniently blew itself out the night before we headed home so the roads had been plowed and we had a nice sunny day home with decent roads again. Got in a nice soak in the hotel hot tub too :)
I have all my christmas shopping done (woot!) and I and my sister in law managed to stay on the side of duty free (phew!). My mother in law not so much... they shopped hard core...we went and checked out all the places and stores in town, especially those we don't have up here where I live (helloooo Target, Kmart and Hot Topic!!). There was no christmas music yet in the mall (thank goodness) which was nice. I also got a few christmas foodie treats & junk you can't get here (gingerbread oreos, peanut butter cheerios, almond joy coffee creamer and Alpine white chocolate peppermints (drool...)). I have a few new outfits for work and some kick ass shoes, and I got to spend hours at what has to be the coolest store ever - Hobby Lobby. Seriously...crafty heaven. Got some stuff for me for making bellydance costumes, as well as gifts and other awesome stuff for future creative schemes...even some robots for my christmas tree. Meep.

Hee hee. Seriously - how cute are these guys? I am on a robot kick at the moment...or as J calls them (in a 1950s newcaster sort of voice)- rowbits. :)

I am glad to be home...safe and sound with J. Things are ramping up at work and it will be nice to not have to worry about the holiday madness. I am not really a shopper so I have had my fill for a long while now...It's back to regular life. So glad.

Altho saturday was hard core all day shopping (seriously - 9AM until 9 PM...these women are crazy) I managed to get a run in sunday morning on the treadmill (the malls didn't open until noon so I could convince my mum-in-law that we wouldn't miss anything!). This morning I came in to work out. Did upper body exercises and some abs and then hopped on the elliptical. I feel grrrrrreat!!

Slowly getting in the christmas spirit :)

Kindness

My boss is a kind man. He is letting me leave work early today to drive to the US because there is a heavy snowfall warning for the south of the province starting at about supper time...right when we would be driving there. Which will mean poor driving conditions...I hated asking, since it would mean I'd have to skip the training we have right after lunch on how the new cold rooms work, but really...it's a walk in fridge. How hard can it be? It wasn't serious training, but I didn't want it to reflect badly on me by leaving early. I asked, and he said it was OK due to the circumstances, so I'm going to take his word that it is. I was going to take the whole day off, except for this training anyways. This way we still get started at noon and it gives us a bit of leeway. I'll be the one driving in the dark in the snow...and this way if it takes a few hours longer we'll still get there. They expect 6-10 inches of snow with wind today. Not looking forward to it...
I slept in as long as I could today. My annoying cats tried to get me up earlier, but I managed an extra 40 minutes or so of sleep. Here's hoping the drive goes well...
Have a good weekend :)

Geo 1, house 0

Last night I attacked the house for 5 solid hours. The main areas are clean and tidy, and I got a bit of organizing done. I didn't get the dresser primed, but so many other cluttery things that have been driving me mad lately have been brought under control. There's still so much more to do, but I look around the main areas of my house now and I'm not embarrassed. I'm actually rather content. My Dad is coming down to fly out and visit my sister while I'm away and I like knowing that he'll actually get to see the house in it's normal state for once...

It's been raining which has turned to snow, so the roads are quite slippery today. I'm hoping the roads improve a bit and things stay cold for a while, so our drive down to the US tomorrow isn't too stressful. I don't mind winter driving, it's the *other* people I worry about. People get stupid this time of year, and try to drive like it's still summertime and that makes for dangerous driving for the rest of us poor sods stuck on the road with them. I'm content to plug along calmly and safely and get to our destination in one piece. It's all major highways and traffic routes on our trip, so with any luck the roads will be OK. Crossing my fingers and toes...

This morning I came in for spin class. It was the hard, yelly instructor, but she was really happy and spontaneous today. I worked really hard, but I enjoyed it. After lots of smiles and drips of sweat and I'm ready for the day.
Later taters :)

Slip sliding away.

Rawr.
This morning was sculpt class. Lots of great stuff for upper and lower body and abs. A lot of cool exercises using towel sliders. I enjoyed it.
I've been planning out my workouts for the weekend since I'm going away on a girls-only trip to the US this weekend. I'm the designated driver for the 8 hour late drive friday night to get us there since I'm OK driving at night, but I want to be as awake as I can since it's deer migration season and I need to be alert. Soooooo friday I'm sleeping in until 7 instead of getting up at 5:20 to workout and I'll just check out the hotel gym on the weekend while I'm there instead. There's a pool and hot tub, plus I found a few bodyweight only bodyrock workouts so even if they don't have a full on gym facility I can slip in a workout (if I'm not exhausted form walking around shopping at the giant Hobby World store...he heh.). I'm not a huge shopper...just looking forward to the trip away to relax, sip coffee and stock up on crafty things at the giant crafty store. That's *my* kinda shopping!
I'm curious to see the mood down there after the whole election dramarama. It's going to be odd needing my passport...but I'm sure they'll let me in.
Hope you're all making it through the week OK. :)

tuesday already?

Last night's belly dance class was fun -we did a lot of hip circles and figures eights which use your obliques a lot. Abs are a bit stiff from it all, but it's so cool to make your body do cool sexy wiggly things like that :)
After supper we assembled the bedside tables and put them in place...and wow they look nice. So good that I couldn't wait to paint the dresser so we took the dresser apart and took the handles off so I can prime it tonight. The stuff in the dresser is in a few rubbermaid bins and hopefully I can get the dresser painted up relatively quickly and have it back next week some time. I have to sand and prime it tonight and if I'm quick about it I can get the dresser painted up before the weekend to give it a few days to sit and harden up. The handles are OK, just a bit brassy, so I'm just going to spray them a flat black and put them back on. This is so exciting. This is stuff I haven't been able to do for years. It's satisfying to look around and see a real change in the house already...and I'm just getting started. He hee.

This morning I came in for my lower body focused workout, with 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical after. After a buy-in of 10 burpees, the workout was 3 sets of:
-15 box step ups with knee raise
-20 deadlifts with 35 Lb
-20 walking lunges with twists with 12 Lbs
-20 sumo squats with side leg extensions
-12 weighted leg extensions (40 Lb)
-15 weighted kick backs on the hip machine (100Lb)
-15 weighted inner thigh squeeze on the hip machine (100Lb)
-10 weighted outer thigh push on the hip machine (100Lb)

And now, after some granola and a banana I'm off to the lab. This afternoon the coolness ramps up to max factor 11. We just got cleared to move into the new building's offices so I'm gonna go get my gear into my (eep!) new office!! There are windows!!! Eeee!

Dusty...

Well then. I didn't get everything done that I wanted to this weekend, but it was busy and productive.
Bottled my blueberry wine, which looks lovely. It fermented out quite dry and my attempts to sweeten it helped a bit, but I didn't make it as sweet as I probably should have. Still a newb at this wine stuff. It's a nice semi dry red - good for most people. Since it will likely be gifted out over the holidays I figure it will do. :) I finished painting up the bedside tables and J and I did solid crazy super clean of our bedroom to suck up all the cat fluff and dust in there, especially taking down the canopy we have had over the bed for years. Preparation for the new tables. Baha.
But wow...So. Much. Dust.  My sneeze record was 16 in a row. Sheesh. My allergies went absolutely insane, but it will be so nice to have the bedroom tidy and organized. I'm repainting our dresser to match our new bedside tables, which will be dry and ready to used in the bedroom today. Hooray! Mini bedroom makeover! In the spring we are replacing the windows in our bedroom and we're going to repaint then and get a new duvet cover. For now, this reboot to our sanctuary is so very nice :)
After a ridiculously convoluted installation of the snow tires, I made a treat that I haven't in a while - meat cheese buns. Fresh buns with spicy hamburger and a square of gouda baked into the centre. I haven't made them since before I started school, because they take all day. I made up 4 dozen and after a late late supper of them there are still lots left to freeze for quick suppers over the next while.
And this morning I was worried my allergies would still be crazy, but I felt fine and was in the gym for my morning workout. I did upper body and back today with 30 minutes on the elliptical after.  3 rounds through sets of reps of arm, shoulder and back weights with some push ups, back work and ab crunches in there. Very nice :)
Tonight is belly dancing and more bedroom attack. I'm rebooting the house one room at a time...Next one - Kitchen! :)

Winter is Coming

Wow. 12 inches of slow overnight after freezing rain. It took me 50 minutes to get to work on a 20 minute bus ride. So very glad I'm not driving today! It's the first real snowfall of winter and everyone is still getting used to it all. Buses were getting stuck.
There was no workout this AM - J and I were out late and it's another late night tonight so I slept in and I'm glad for the extra time getting ready today! Have a nice weekend everyone. Besides putting ont he snow tires (a bit late heh) I have lots of busy chores planned for the weekend and am looking forward to whipping my house into shape and finishing some painting.
Have a great day!

Winter plans

I was reading a post from a few years in october when I started up a good winter workout plan that I remember really enjoying. I was thinking about it over lunch and I think it will give it a shot starting monday and see how it goes:

Cardio:
M/W/F: 30 min HIT cardio on the bike or elliptical
T/Th: 25 minute swim
Weekends: what I can fit in. Maybe nothing...maybe walks, elliptical, exercise ball DVD...

Muscle work:
M/Th: Lower body and abs
T/F: Upper body weights
Wed - a bit longer cardio and a focus on core and back

Sounds reasonable to me. Wed or Sat I may swap in a ZWOW or bodyrock workout or try and hit the sculpt class Wednesdays when there's room. I just need a bit of regularity and newness. Plus I would like to get back to swimming this winter. It's so nice when it's stupid cold out to hop in a pool every once in a while and I really enjoyed it. Plus, now that I have a locker I can leave my swim stuff there and it will be way less of a hastle.

halloween fail

Yesterday was a fail nutrition wise. Why? Well I honestly don't have a sweet tooth (I like salty stuff) and I still ended up eating a rediculous amount of Halloween candy yesterday at work and at home. Not proud of it. Very relaxing fun time at work...got too festive with the candy. Mindful eating was definitely not on the radar. At least I got to wear my bear head all day! :)

After supper we had more kids come to our door than ever before and then when I ran out to get more candy since it looked like we'd been invaded and were out of it...no one else came. So now I have a bag of spiderman candy, which thankfully I am not tempted by. So much sugar yesterday I just feel blech.
So today I'll be good. Every day is a new one...and a good one :)

I came in and did my own workout. After yesterday which was pretty upper body intense I made up my own mostly lower body workout, followed by 30 min on the elliptical.
3 sets of the following with 12 Lb dumbbell:
-20 weighted box step ups, each side
-20 one legged dead lifts
-15 lawnmower pulls (with one dumbbell)

2 sets of:
-leg extensions (40 Lb)
-back extensions
-hanging ab crunches
-weighted side leg raises (100Lb)
-weighted thigh crunches (100Lb)
-weighted kick backs (100Lb)

Very solid workout.
Now...to the lab.