End Scene

Things started off well, but the last thing I wanted to do Wednesday - Friday was workout. Wow. It was like a motivation black hole or something.

To be fair, Monday killed my ankle. It swelled up and no amount of careful limping, ice, soaking, massage, and ibuprofen would make a dent in the pain or the inflamed tissue.

On the plus side, a few tweaks to Couch to 5k helped me make it through. You could call it cheating, but I consider it being kind to the previously mentioned cruddy achilles tendons and ankle.

Wednesday my ankle finally felt better, so I split the run time in half. Friday I *skipped* but made up for it today. Instead of a full nine minutes of sustained running, which was really killing me pain-wise, I ran three, walked two, alternating for about twenty minutes.

In all, I worked out for four hours and 52 minutes. Not shabby, considering the massive energy drop after my ankle started throwing a fit.

I'm thinking I'll continue the alternating walking/jogging for week 5. Sustained running is probably causing more damage than it is worth at this point (weight?), but I still want the aerobic benefit of the increased intensity of jogging v. walking.

Activity Tracking

Looks like writing down what I've been doing for workouts is making me get competitive with myself.

By that I mean that I just checked out the past two weeks' activity levels:

• Jan 25-31 I worked out for 6 hours and 17 minutes. Wowza.
• Feb 1-7 I worked out for 3 hours and 34 minutes.

Now that I am looking at the numbers from the drop in activity from week to week, I feel like doing more. I'm enjoying all of this motivation. Gotta keep it up!

Kicking off the Year of the Snake

Though things on the career front are slow, this weekend was pretty spectacular.

First of all, this happened:

Photo by thelsdj

That's Cheeto, basking in the sun and sporting her cone of shame. She's fenced in because company was over and she has a habit of trying to eat them. C'est la vie.

Muse and I ended up having family over Friday and Saturday evening and had far too much fun playing Heavy Rain, Rockband, and Cards Against Humanity, watching bad rom-coms starring Ryan Reynolds, and eating delicious things. My family can cook, y'all. :) Waffle pizza made the menu, among other tasty things.

On Sunday, I woke up late, took Cheeto for a nice, long walk to make up for all of that fenced-in time, and grabbed some tasty items for Chinese New Year. I skipped the moon cake in favor of some jin deui (sesame balls), and the super-not-traditional coconut, cream cheese, and red bean filled buns. Oh! And Senorita bread! It may not look like much, but heated up that stuff is heaven. Sugary, buttery, carb-y heaven. I followed all of that up with Chinese takeout from J's Garden paired with lazy person rice cooker rice.

Cheeto finding the scent. Of noms, I presume.

Imagine my surprise when I weighed myself and found I'd lost another three pounds in the past week. Woo! It seems the Couch to 5k and all the walking have been paying off. I just finished week three of this version of the program. Seven minutes may not sound like a lot of continuous time running to anyone, but to me it was hell. My short achilles tendons and wonky ankle make it all the more challenging, but I'm incredibly pleased to have made it this far. I managed a small self-reward of some light gloves to keep my hands warm on walks without overheating, as well as a headband to keep the wispy layers of my hair out of my face while working out. Hopefully I'll get smart and get back to doing those tendon lengthening exercises from my ballet days. I'd love to get back to a point where 30 minutes in slightly flexed snow boots won't cause severe calf cramps, but we'll see. Gotta finish the small stuff first.

THIS IS A POST TITLE

More pictures of food BECAUSE I CAN.

Besides the lemonade, I ended up making cranberry orange scones and chicken cacciatore. I wish I liked the act of baking and cooking more - if I could just research recipes and have the food magically appear, that would be GREAT. Tonight's food project is crockpot beef stew. I'm hoping to find more tasty vegetarian recipes, but most of the ones I've tried thus far just aren't that satisfying. :-( Oh well.

Good news is I'm down 6 pounds since January 1st, despite all of this eating I've been doing (the Bestie was in town earlier this month and MY WORD did we eat. That was basically the whole visit - waddling from one food adventure to the next.). The walking has been wonderful and I am finally at a point where pushing myself physically feels rewarding instead of like I'm trying to torture myself. Hopefully I'll get to a point where I'm not waking up every few hours from muscle soreness. But with the Couch to 5k thing, I doubt that will be soon.

When Life Gives You Lemons

Tasty

This, my friends, is a glorious glass of cold lemonade. Maybe not so great for those of you dealing with winter storms, but to me it is divine. It represents all of the best things about working from home. The fact that I feel stronger than I have in ages and therefore had the emotional energy to make something from scratch. When insomnia strikes, I can stay up and squeeze lemons rather than freak out about needing to be up at a certain time. I happened to be home in the middle of the day when a friendly neighbor stopped by to deliver the lemons. It's also incredibly tasty. My goodness.

Unfortunately, my primary client had to pull way back on hours. Here's hoping I can fill up my time with some new design work, rather than go back to the 9-5 grind. *raises glass*