Whew!
So these past couple weeks have been wild! I had a poetry reading, an old college friend passed away, my sister had a baby (and moved out of the ghetto!), I started the 21 Day Yoga Challenge, and one of my best friends turned 30 (I feel a bit gross about the order of this list, regarding priority and importance to the chi of it all, but whatever). E. and I drove up to Massachusetts to meet baby Olivia, who turned out to not really be much of a conversationalist but adorable nonetheless. We also helped her parents move. In a snowstorm. It actually worked out well for E. and I, timing wise. Because he brought his mountain bike and I brought my running shoes (though I should have brought my waterproof trail shoes, for how snowy it already was there, having snowed the night we arrived) and spent a good chunk of Friday trampling though the snow-covered Wompatuck State Park near my parents house. I have one of those RunKeeper apps on my phone, so I got to see a neat little map of where I ran, all the times I got lost and all that, after the fact. I got in an hour's run, about 4.6 miles. Not bad for being in the woods, in the snow, not sure where to go. It was nice to breath that fresh air, anyway. Then I spent the 40 minutes or so before Evan got home practicing yoga in the basement, which was a wonderfully strong, limber practice for the late morning.The rest of the day was spent by the fire in their living room, then a nice seafood dinner, then some drinks with some other of my closest friends. Those people really make it hard to stay in Pittsburgh whenever I visit up north.
Anyway, it was good that we got our exercise in on Friday, because if we had moved on Friday we would have been snowbound all Saturday, which was moving day, and the day would have been a loss. I'll come out and say it. I love moving. Specifically, I love loading up the truck, moving things out of the old place. Moving things into the new place is nice too I suppose, but I think I like that more when it's my own junk. For someone else, I'm a get-it-outta-there kinda broad. I had a great time.
Anyway, we had the birthday party later, I consumed a solid 1,000 calories or so (give or take), and then we drove back - stopping between New Jersey and Philadelphia to attend the memorial for Melissa. It was really nice to meet her mom and brother, and to see some old friends from college, some of whom I haven't seen in 8 years or more. Bittersweet as life always is.
On the Wednesday before our road trip, I made Alton Brown's recipes for granola bars and power bars, both taken from the Power Trip episode of Good Eats. They were the perfect road trip food to keep us from pigging out at gas station convenience stores or at fast food joints along the way. The power bars were also a great pre-run nibble, just one bite of a bar and I felt good to go (until I made it home and had some Oreo cookies).
As for the yoga challenge.....Well the hardest part is updating my stats on the website. I don't have time for that crap, I mean look at how often I update this blog, and I actually enjoy this! Past that, I'm, like, pretty busy, you know? I try to get in a solid practice every day, but sometimes I do miss. I'm learning to play Boris The Spider on the bass, I have like 5 readings coming up (one of which is in Chicago at AWP, holla!), I had that road trip, and oh yeah, I fell on my bike again. This time, it's my poor, beautiful arms that are all messed up. Now I'll never be an elbow model. Today, Wednesday, is Ladies' Night at The Climbing Wall and I had plans to go with a friend or two. I'm still contemplating going, even if I can only do a couple easy ones. I'm worried about falling on my elbows again, but honestly I thought I had broken them for how insanely swollen they got and still were limber, and yet they don't hurt all that much. To the touch, sure, and achy of course they are, but not the way I expected an elbow injury to feel. You know, that horribly, tingy feeling of hitting one's elbow - "the funny bone"? So maybe it wouldn't be a big deal if I fell, which I'm sure I will since my arms are achy and tired feeling. We'll see how I feel after work. I can still ride my bike, anyway, so I'm a step ahead of the last time I took a spill....
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
21 day yoga challenge, day two
So I started this thing, which I believe I talked about last time, called 21 Day Yoga Challenge, where you practice yoga, eat one vegetarian meal (or more), and meditate 15 minutes per day. It started yesterday. I woke up early, had some cereal and a protein shake, did some morning yoga, meditated on the way to work (does that count? cycling is a yogic experience in its own rite), had leftover indian food (bindhi masala, aka okra), meditated again at home in bed. Totally killed it. But that's the thing with these sort of set challenges. The first day is always easy, because it's planned for. It's prepped. It's exciting. Day two, though. That's when you make a great breakfast, specifically the recipe sent to you by the Challenge to make yesterday, but it comes out great but suddenly just as the coffee's made, you have to help your husband clean out the gutters all morning (okay, hold the ladder and hope he doesn't fall to his short destiny) because the neighbor won't stop persisting. It's when you have plans to spend the evening - before friends come over to watch Twin Peaks, as they do every Tuesday - practicing yoga and putting laundry away, but instead someone texts you who you rarely hang out with anymore regarding tacos afterwork and you'd be foolish to say no because this is the year of YES. And as you ride to tacos you think about this blog post, which you write while watching Twin Peaks, episode 2 (considering the pilot to be episode 0), one of the best episodes of the series. But there's always midnight, the witching sweating hour.
Back to the drawing board.
Back to the drawing board.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Fun-A-Day, 21 Day Yoga Challenge, and other self-help programs
Hi everyone!
So I haven't posted in a long time, haven't really been exercising that much either - which I know because not only did I gain about 8 pounds since coming back from Costa Rica, I also literally busted out of my skirt last night (New Year's Day) after dinner at E's mom's house when I plopped my fat ass down in her new car. So there's that. (Granted, in my defense it's a real old skirt passed down from my mother's skinnier days, already a size too small for me, AND it busted in a place where I'd already hand-stitched it after ripping through it on a day I thought I'd be able to ride my bike in it, and poked the nose od my saddle right through the back of the thing). Fortunately for us all, on New Year's Eve I ran into a friend who is once again participating in Fun-A-Day, as am I, and when he shared with me his idea it meshed so well with a resolution of mine that I decided to piggy-back with him somewhat.
I feel this entry might start bursting at the seams in its own right, but I'll try to keep it trim. R's Fun-A-Day project is to exercise or do something active for an hour a day. When I mentioned to him that I had recently been bouldering at The Climbing Wall, he asked if he could go with me next time. Which made me want to go all the more, because not only was it really fun, but going with a buddy makes it that much more enjoyable and that much more likely to continue to happen. It's a bit out of the way from my house by bike (considering I live at the very bottom of the hill, and I'm lazy, and it's winter), but as I'm trying to not become a total lardo it probably would be a good idea to get riding up the hill anyway. It would also be nice to finally hang out with R, a great and old friend who I rarely see these days.
For my New Year resolutions, there are quite a few. One of them, pertinent to R's Fun-A-Day project, is to do more whole-body activities that are fun and healthy, rather than living a life of bipolar activity between not doing much of anything physically-speaking and then thinking I can just go and run 7 miles (I downloaded an app recently, called RunKeeper, that's been helping with my running, by the way, if you have a smartphone I highly recommend it). Also, my old gym was getting to be kind of a drag in that their policies are bunk, their customer service is horrible, and I needed something slightly more social in general to help balance me out.
I've been going to Amazing Yoga, which I've mentioned before and love, and E has started going to Bikram so I occasionally go there with him. Okay, so we've been there once, and we went together, and today I'm going to Amazing Yoga and he'll go to Bikram by himself, since I personally don't like it as much as a practice.
Speaking of yoga though, have y'all heard of 21 Day Yoga Challenge? It's sponsored by Yoga Journal and hosted online by Social Workout. As you guessed, it's 21 days of yoga every day. Not only that, but at least one meal per day needs to be vegetarian, and your day must also include a meditation. For me, those two are already checked off, because I eat mainly vegetarian or at least try to as much as my body allows, and I need to meditate every night before I fall asleep (which may be cheating as meditation should be a mindful practice, but hey, at least I'm doing it). And another resolution of mine is to do sun salutations every morning. I did today, and feel better for it. Just think how I'll feel come February!
Every day, starting January 9th, Yoga Journal sends you an email with yoga poses, vegetarian recipes, meditation guides, and other helpful tips to keep motivated and strong. And since a lot of times the hard part of something like this is the loss of momentum due to lack of creativity in new things - thinking up routines for yoga poses, how to cook vegetarian if the closest thing you come to kale and tempeh stirfry is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and what the hell is meditation anyway - these emails should really help us all over that hump.
ANOTHER resolution of mine is to not drink so much beer. I had completely stopped drinking it around the end of 2010 because it was making me really sick, and had since weened it back into my life, along with bread and soy which were also making me sick. Not that I feel good right now, but I was so happy to be able to drink it again that I had a casual beer in the afternoon when I had one free fairly often and now I'm getting to be a fatty I can blame it - quite unfairly, I know - on the beer and restrict myself again to only special occasions. I believe the thing that was hard was that there have been special occasions in my life weekly since August. E is feeling it as well, in his own ways, so at least we can go into this together and support each other (and, with a good bit self-talking, tell each other we are not, in fact, morbidly obese because of a few holiday pounds).
So I haven't posted in a long time, haven't really been exercising that much either - which I know because not only did I gain about 8 pounds since coming back from Costa Rica, I also literally busted out of my skirt last night (New Year's Day) after dinner at E's mom's house when I plopped my fat ass down in her new car. So there's that. (Granted, in my defense it's a real old skirt passed down from my mother's skinnier days, already a size too small for me, AND it busted in a place where I'd already hand-stitched it after ripping through it on a day I thought I'd be able to ride my bike in it, and poked the nose od my saddle right through the back of the thing). Fortunately for us all, on New Year's Eve I ran into a friend who is once again participating in Fun-A-Day, as am I, and when he shared with me his idea it meshed so well with a resolution of mine that I decided to piggy-back with him somewhat.
I feel this entry might start bursting at the seams in its own right, but I'll try to keep it trim. R's Fun-A-Day project is to exercise or do something active for an hour a day. When I mentioned to him that I had recently been bouldering at The Climbing Wall, he asked if he could go with me next time. Which made me want to go all the more, because not only was it really fun, but going with a buddy makes it that much more enjoyable and that much more likely to continue to happen. It's a bit out of the way from my house by bike (considering I live at the very bottom of the hill, and I'm lazy, and it's winter), but as I'm trying to not become a total lardo it probably would be a good idea to get riding up the hill anyway. It would also be nice to finally hang out with R, a great and old friend who I rarely see these days.
For my New Year resolutions, there are quite a few. One of them, pertinent to R's Fun-A-Day project, is to do more whole-body activities that are fun and healthy, rather than living a life of bipolar activity between not doing much of anything physically-speaking and then thinking I can just go and run 7 miles (I downloaded an app recently, called RunKeeper, that's been helping with my running, by the way, if you have a smartphone I highly recommend it). Also, my old gym was getting to be kind of a drag in that their policies are bunk, their customer service is horrible, and I needed something slightly more social in general to help balance me out.
I've been going to Amazing Yoga, which I've mentioned before and love, and E has started going to Bikram so I occasionally go there with him. Okay, so we've been there once, and we went together, and today I'm going to Amazing Yoga and he'll go to Bikram by himself, since I personally don't like it as much as a practice.
Speaking of yoga though, have y'all heard of 21 Day Yoga Challenge? It's sponsored by Yoga Journal and hosted online by Social Workout. As you guessed, it's 21 days of yoga every day. Not only that, but at least one meal per day needs to be vegetarian, and your day must also include a meditation. For me, those two are already checked off, because I eat mainly vegetarian or at least try to as much as my body allows, and I need to meditate every night before I fall asleep (which may be cheating as meditation should be a mindful practice, but hey, at least I'm doing it). And another resolution of mine is to do sun salutations every morning. I did today, and feel better for it. Just think how I'll feel come February!
Every day, starting January 9th, Yoga Journal sends you an email with yoga poses, vegetarian recipes, meditation guides, and other helpful tips to keep motivated and strong. And since a lot of times the hard part of something like this is the loss of momentum due to lack of creativity in new things - thinking up routines for yoga poses, how to cook vegetarian if the closest thing you come to kale and tempeh stirfry is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and what the hell is meditation anyway - these emails should really help us all over that hump.
ANOTHER resolution of mine is to not drink so much beer. I had completely stopped drinking it around the end of 2010 because it was making me really sick, and had since weened it back into my life, along with bread and soy which were also making me sick. Not that I feel good right now, but I was so happy to be able to drink it again that I had a casual beer in the afternoon when I had one free fairly often and now I'm getting to be a fatty I can blame it - quite unfairly, I know - on the beer and restrict myself again to only special occasions. I believe the thing that was hard was that there have been special occasions in my life weekly since August. E is feeling it as well, in his own ways, so at least we can go into this together and support each other (and, with a good bit self-talking, tell each other we are not, in fact, morbidly obese because of a few holiday pounds).
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