Some Questions For Y'all

So, I really need to do a little spiffin' up on my page.  I know I have that "home" button there, and I did a little "about me" section, but what else would you all like to see?  That navigation bar is looking awfully plain!

I was thinking about maybe linking up a page and listing my Death Gym workouts?  Would people be interested in that?  What about maybe my training plans when I finally get back to running?  Actually, that would probably be a really good idea....it will help keep me accountable.

But I don't want to make pages that will bore all of you.  And I don't want to make pages that come across as sounding braggy either.  And I can't post a page with a training plan until I start running.....and training.

So that leaves me with (possibly, if you're interested) Death Gym workouts.

Anything else?

*And just to note....I had most of this typed up before the whole power outage thing, so don't expect much else from me until I'm back on the grid.  Posting from my phone is kinda a pain.*

Sandy....

....She's a real bitch!

So, there was no gymming it this morning, kinda like I suspected.  I don't know if it was the crap I did this weekend, or the impending Armageddon, but my knee was super icky today.  More sore than it has been in a loooong time.  I even went as far as wearing my obnoxious purple sneakers to work, and not my nice black ones.  Oh well, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. 

I guess it is a good thing the gym was closed on my way home from work....I probably would have went there and tried something stupid, like walk/jog intervals, simply out of guilt for eating like crap.  Oh, plus PT was cancelled today, and I have to call on Wednesday before I go, just to make sure they have power and that they're open.

Must be nice.  Working for the county, in a 24-hour building, means my offices will never close.  I worked the whole day today, and I'll try my darndest to get in there tomorrow morning.  Because if I don't go in, I don't get paid.  And trust me, I don't work b/c I enjoy it (okay, this job, I actually DO enjoy), I work b/c I need the money.

Anyways, unless you're living under a rock, you know about hurricane Sandy.  The winds are a-blowing.  I found this in the road after work today, literally right outside my house.

Unfortunately, for some reason, when a particularly awful storm strikes, the comfort food switch in my brain goes off.  So I had a fabulous breakfast, ate very well while at work, and then proceeded to come home and blow it.

Gah.  Can I hope the gym will be open tomorrow?  It is supposed to be Death Gym day.  Sadly, I have a feeling it will be closed.

Right now, the power keeps flickering, so I'm going to end this before I lose it somewhere in cyber land.

Stay safe!

Food Overload, Hobbling Pain, & a Poll

Today, I ate my caramel apple.  And a shit ton of Chinese food.  Not necessarily in that order.

See, weekends tend to suck for me.  All during the week, I eat my breakfasts, pack my healthy lunches, have fruit for snacks, and come home to my healthy dinner.

Weekends, it all falls apart.  I don't know if it is because I'm not following a pre-determined time schedule, or if it is because weekends are when I used to get in my decent blocks of working out, or if it is just because I'm generally more relaxed.

But.....I gotta realize I haven't been working out like I have before my hobbling.  I'm still working out, just not as intensely, and not for nearly as long periods of time.  Which means I can't be eating like crazy on the weekends....I gotta reign it in.

Speaking of my hobbling, today sucked.  I'm sitting here, icing my knee, hoping it goes numb.  Seriously....I don't want to feel it.  I went to a party yesterday and was on my feet almost the entire evening.  (Stupid, I know.)

I'm paying for it today.  Especially with attempting to get ready for the hurricane Sandy nonsense.  Did you know that Giant is completely out of water?  Yep.  At Sam's Club we had to get a case of those little mini-bottles of water....I think they're like 8 oz each.  Ha.....that's like a shot glass to me!

So the sore knee, shopping, cleaning up the remnants of the party this morning (which means lifting ginormous coolers half-full of ice....I'll be damned if I look weak), picking up all the randomness in our backyard so it doesn't get swept away, laundry, and then prepping food for the week....well.....my knee was screaming!

So obviously, my plans of gymming it today didn't pan out, and I'm seriously doubting I'll be going tomorrow morning, considering how sore I am.  Which means I definitely cannot make a habit out of things like caramel apples and shit tons of Chinese food.

The good thing?  I made a double batch of baked oatmeal for Chris and I to eat throughout the week.  That stuff is my newest obsession!  It isn't super thick like oatmeal bars, but it isn't all goopy like normal oatmeal.  (Blech....the only oatmeal I can eat in conventional oatmeal form is steel cut oats, everything else looks like zombie brains.)  And just a heads up.....you might need a log-in if you want to check out the link for the baked oatmeal.  If you can't access it, let me know and I'll give you the recipe.

Now, completely off topic.......here's something I found interesting and wanted to share:

Yesterday's Women's Health daily poll asked the following question (not in these exact words b/c I don't remember it entirely):

Which sporting event would you most like to participate in?

My immediate answer, before seeing any of the ones I would be forced to choose from was this:  The Crossfit Games.  (Ha....are you surprised?)

These were my choices:
Boston Marathon
Summer Olympics
World Cup
Kentucky Derby
(One or two others that apparently weren't worth me remembering.)
This doesn't apply to me

I ended up choosing "this doesn't apply to me."  I was sad inside that I couldn't even write-in the Crossfit Games.

Mazezilla

No...I'm not going to write about something deep like how life is one ginormous maze with twists and turns and different paths and that the direction you take is up to you.  (Although, that is a pretty good idea.  I may have to bookmark this!)  This blog is much simpler than that.  I'm going to write about a trip a bunch of us took to a local corn maze.

I had been looking forward to Mazezilla for a long time.  I had wanted to do it last year, but life got in the way.  This year, however, I had won four tickets to the place.  And admission is like $11 per person....so I wasn't about to let $44 worth of found money go to waste.  (Yep, with me, its all about money.  Why do you think I use my gym membership?  B/c if I didn't, I'd be out that money.  Well, that, and the fact that I actually like to work out.)

The hubbs and I and some friends headed out to the corn maze, but before we even get there, our friend ends up getting lost!  Sheesh.....how were we going to make it out of the corn maze if we couldn't even get to the place!  (In all fairness, the directions on the Mazezilla website suck, and try to take you someplace 40 mins away, when in reality, the corn maze is more like 20 min away.)

So we waited.  (Yes, I am completely aware this is a crappy picture.  But seriously, what do you expect in the middle of a dark field with a cell phone camera?)

While we waited, we wandered around the pumpkin/weird-looking gourd area.  We found a couple gems.  I though this one looked like a slug.  I probably should have brought it home....it could have been my mascot!

And I was truly enamored with the apple gourds.  I have a thing for apples.  But when they're ginormous and look like gourds, they're even better.  (Photo has been blurred to protect the innocent.  Not because of user error with the camera.  That's my story.)

Seriously, though.....how cool are these?

Anyways.  The rest of our group finally made it to Mazezilla in one piece!  We took a bumpity ride down to the actual maze, paid our money, got our hands stamped, were given little cards with a list of different things we were to find, and off we went.

Seriously?

At first, we were super frustrated.  Or, at least, I was.  There was no direction.  No hints about where to go.  No signs that said, "Hey loser, you suck.  You went the wrong way."  We wandered around aimlessly until we came across a sign with a picture of a barn on it.  There were hole punchers attached to it, which we then used to punch out the barn on our cards.

And then we wandered.  Some more.  And more.

(I don't really know what I expected, since I had never done a corn maze before, but for some reason I thought it would be more involved.  Anyone else ever go to a corn maze?  If so, how was it organized?)

Eventually, we got smart.  We wandered back to the beginning of the maze, took a pic of the map they had posted, and used that to orient ourselves.  After that, things went pretty smoothly, and we found all the objects and were out of the maze in no time!

Once we finished, we hung out a little bit, and I started to have Mudder flashbacks!

Yep, they had a maze made out of stacked bales of hay!  Throw in some mud and water, and we could have run a mini-mudder!

While the kiddos were having fun in the hay maze and jumping in pits full of dried corn, the hubbs decided to chill with my headlamp.  Maybe we'll make a runner out of him yet!

We took the bumpity ride back up to the pumpkin/gourd/parking area, where I got some tasty apple cider and this:

Yum!  I haven't eaten it yet, but I'm sooooo looking forward to it!

And So It Starts

Oh boy.  Here we go.  Jump right in, or provide some intro?  I'm guessing maybe some intro would be good here.  I'm not even sure if I'm going to click that all-important share button to post this to the world, but I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I really should.

Here's the dilemma.  I try to remain fairly private.  Sure, I joke that my whole life is on Facebook.  (Really, it is.)  But, well, that's mostly the stuff I want to share.  Ok, that makes almost no sense.

Many of you know that my whole weight loss/exercise nut phase started with a little ole website by the name of SparkPeople. (Hey lookie there, I figured out how to create a link on blogger without actually just typing the web address....go me!)  Anyways, I've become kind of, oh, i don't know...a thing over there.  In a good way.  I'm not good at giving myself credit for stuff, but I guess I'm moderately popular.  Maybe it has to do with the whole weightloss story.  Maybe it has to do with my honesty in my blogs.  Maybe it has to do with my I'm gonna give it my all or die trying attitude.  Or maybe it simply has to do with the fact that I'm human, and I write about the good, the bad, and the very ugly.

But, well, I have people in my real life (not my online SparkLife) who like to know what I'm up to.  Who tell me I'm an inspiration and should share stuff.  For some reason though, I find it hard to share in real life.  I kind of compartmentalized my friends....the real life group and the SparkPeeps.  Online, on SparkPeople, when I first started there, I hadn't met any of them.  I was sharing, essentially, with strangers.  So it made it easy.  I didn't KNOW these people.  But somehow, along the way, my two lives became blurred.  My real life friends know more about my SparkPeeps.  And my SparkPeeps have entered my real life, especially since I've met a bunch of them.

Now, I find myself posting about something on Facebook, blogging about it on SparkPeople, and sometimes even guest blogging for a friend of mine.  It is getting to be a tad much.  Kind of time-consuming.  Plus, in this forum, I'll be able to reach out to more people.  So, I'm going to try things out here.  If I decide I hate it, or people don't like it, or I suck at it, so be it. But, if I trust in what others have said about me, maybe my honesty about what I experience will help others realize that trying to change your lifestyle is so completely doable.

Oh....as for the name.  (Duh, should have explained that earlier.)  That would be my handle on Spark.  Clever, right?  Took me a while to come up with that one.  Anyways, I find it easier to write stuff and post it under that name....think of it as a pen name.