Embembol

Apparently there was a 1975 version of North and South with Patrick Stewart (with hair!). I might have to watch that one too...

Friday - Didn't get all the kicks or all the steps Went to bed late. My sister and I drove down to the Springs right after we got out of work (3 hours of sitting on my butt), and then sat in the kitchen and talked to my mom until like 1 am. Always fun, but not good for sleeping. Saturday - 12,673 steps, new record for me. We did the Incline for Father's Day - my sister did it in 38 minutes, and I took a little over an hour. It is HARD! I sent my husband a picture and he was all "oh, did you walk or run?" Ha, yeah right. Definitely trudged - "the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in life except the impulse to simply soldier on" pretty much nails it. Once you get to the top you take the Barr trail down, which is about 3 miles, I think. There are like a million people on the Incline at 7 am on a Saturday, apparently it is the hip thing to do. Sunday - Sat around and watched North and South (not the one with Patrick Swayze, the BBC one) because I love it (also Richard Armitage...mmm). Did not mow the lawn or vacuum or sweep my kitchen or do anything like I was supposed to. Totally worth. On a very sad note, a 64-year-old man definitely died while we were there. We were sitting at the top of the Incline, and a man showed up shouting "Does anyone have an epi pen up here? There's a man going into cardiac arrest halfway down the Barr trail!!!" No one had one, but three or four super fit military-looking guys popped up and raced down the trail to see if they could help. By the time I got there the man's torso and head were covered in a tarp and the paramedics were just milling around. I've never seen anyone that was dead that wasn't at a funeral before. He's three years younger than my dad is, which is scary. Dad's in pretty decent shape overall, but he is almost 70. It's weird to think about.

Ok, I took a long time on this update. Oops. I know I said I'd do this during the weekdays, but I figured weekends were a good time to try to catch up (maybe). Saturday - did all the kicks and got all the steps. We cut down a tree in our yard that died last winter, so I got a lot of activity sawing branches and ferrying them across our yard to a wood pile. Also lots and lots of scratches. Friday night I actually got 8 hours of sleep, but not because I went to bed early (more games!). We just slept in late enough that I was fine. Saturday we also went to see Jurassic World. It was good and not so good at the same time. Engaging, great visuals, good actors overall, but not a ton of story. Also I think they fit the "jumped the shark" phase of film/show lifetimes. Sunday - sat around at our pool, did NOT get all the steps or the kicks. My pedometer says 949, lol, but that's because I didn't wear it in my bathing suit, or after we got home. I went to bed on time but didn't fall asleep for like 45 minutes, unfortunately. Monday - 10,005 steps, plus HIIT and my kicks! I'll post the HIIT schedule later, since my phone won't upload it to Google Drive without a WiFi connection. It was pretty good. I feel like it was ab-centric for me, but my husband says it was all hamstrings for him, which I think is odd. The blank space in round 3 was "run around for 30 seconds while carrying someone piggyback". Really hard! Stretched for like 25 minutes after class. Did not get enough sleep, because I had to wake up at 5 am on Tuesday Tuesday - Yay, 10,011 steps! I've started going on walk/runs in the big yard/open space by our house. Nice groomed grass, so I've been going barefoot - apparently when I run barefoot I run on my toes, so my calves are really sore, which is unexpected but good. Did the kicks, stretched a little bit, and once again did not go to bed on time, because hubby got home at like 8:30 from work and THEN cooked dinner. Wednesday - Whew, so many days! Did not get all the steps, and I donated blood in the morning, so I didn't spar at TKD. Did all the kicks and stretched for 15 minutes, but didn't do a lot of exercising overall. Went to bed with plenty of time to spare, finally. @weaver - Caprica is 8 or so, Mithrandir is 6, and Nymeria is about 4 months old. We just took Mith in to get his teeth cleaned yesterday, and the poor guy had to get 6 teeth pulled. The doctor said that they usually don't see this level of decay until cats are 12 or 13 I feel like a terrible parent. @Jifu - the HIIT class is our instructor's bid to get people in shape for the next tournament season. He wants us to eventually do 2 or 3 days a week for conditioning so that we can outlast our opponents It is completely optional, but the people who come to HIIT class the most are also the people who are sparring the best. Three of them are actually competing at the ATA Worlds Tournament next month. @kishi - my hip is starting to feel better since I've been avoiding side kicks, but I'm doing the Incline in Colorado Springs on Saturday for my dad's b-day/Father's Day, so God only knows what will happen after that. It is 1 mile long and climbs 2,000 vertical feet, and my sister has been prepping for it by doing a TON of stairclimber at the gym. I'll probably die, and then I won't have to worry about side kicks any more

Happy late birthday! I hope it was awesome I actually know like three other people with a birthday on the 17th, which is weird. I only know two people with my birthday - they are both named Nick, and they are both from the same smallish town in CO, but somehow they don't know each other. Also, I don't have any good swear replacers. Mine are all like "geez louise!" or "Zetus lapetus!" (from "Zenon, girl of the 21st century". Memorable? Yes! Excellent movie? Not necessarily.). "Holy strawberries, Batman, we're in a jam!" "Holy Castamere, Batman, that's a lot of rain!".

Hey! I'm glad you made it back for another challenge I know what you mean about feeling gross. It isn't that you actually think you're fat, you just don't feel *right*. Even if those runs and kettlebell swings somehow don't change the way you look that much, I'm sure you'll feel better with all that activity. Good luck <3

I get a week off at Christmas (inorite?!? Awesome perk of the pharmaceutical industry), and I always intend to do a ton of productive stuff, and then I just play Starcraft II or LoL for like three days straight. I usually try to do air squats during cut scenes and when the other players are loading, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't make up for sitting for that long I'm pretty impressed with your stopping swearing goal. I didn't curse at all until after HS, and I don't think I said the eff word out loud until grad school (research just wrings them out of you), and now I am pretty sure I'd never be able to keep to your two a day limit. You're doing excellently! P.S. - thanks for reminding me to take my vitamins today! I almost forgot until I saw your post again.

I hope the new job is going well!

@weaver: I love it when I kick people in the head! It makes me feel super capable Thursday: Did all the kicks! Then went to TKD, did a bunch more slow-press side kicks and wanted to die. I borked up my right hip sometime during class doing axe kicks, so I'm vetoing the side kick part of my kicking challenge until further notice. Round kicks still feel fine, but when I bring my knee up to my chest to chamber for a side kick it REALLY hurts. Went to bed on time but didn't get 8 hours of sleep. We recently got all of our cats licensed and vaccinated, and they're all jingly now with their new tags. Hubby had to lock them out of the bedroom before I could fall asleep. Steps: 7254, even wearing the pedometer to HIIT class, lol. HIIT class was good. Let's see if the picture upload worked... This time around I had to stop in the middle of the pushups, but I made it through most everything else, and I still did 15/14/17 pushups for the three rounds. Edit - I don't want to take the time to figure out how to upload a picture correctly into this post, so a link to the gallery will have to do. The rounds are 30 seconds of work, 10 second break, 3x through each round, then a minute break between rounds. I do love the quotes that our instructor puts up, though. Friday: Did the front and round kicks, felt pretty good. I'm actually sore from all this kicking! Good Friday is game night, so did NOT go to bed on time. One game of Terra Mystica and one game of Navigador = about 5 hours of play time, with a break in the middle for ice cream Totally worth staying up until midnight. Only 7387 steps, I'm kind of sucking at this. I'm going to have to actually go on walks, I guess.

How do your vitamins taste? Mine aren't bad, but they have quite a strong scent when you first open the bottle. Also they make my pee SUPER yellow. I just bought some fish oil pills yesterday, because according to the interwebz I don't eat nearly enough fish to get enough Omega-3s to make up for all the grain fed cow I eat. We'll see what happens... Also, I was watching "I didn't know I was pregnant!" on, IDK, TLC or something last night. If these ladies can have babies in rest stop bathrooms after not knowing at all that they were pregnant, and their babies are alright, I feel like we'll be super awesome at this

I'm doing slightly better today. Remembered my pedometer, forgot my door badge for work, lol. Someday I'll remember everything that goes in my pants. Tuesday - Had a migraine. I got most of the fast kicks done, didn't stretch, didn't have enough steps (probably - again, no pedometer). I did, however, get into bed at 10 (alarm goes off at 6:15). My husband isn't so much for going to bed that early, so it's a good thing I bought a face mask at Target from the $1 bin Wednesday - Man, that is a lot of kicks when you actually do them all. Whew. Stretched after TKD sparring class, got a bunch of steps in, and did NOT go to bed early enough. 10:30 instead of 10 - we were watching The 13th Warrior, how do you say no to Antonio Banderas? Today we have an adult color belts TKD class followed by a HIIT class - I don't think our instructor got the memo that HIIT is supposed to be short, lol. We do 4 segments - the first three segments are each 3 rounds of 4 exercises for 30 on/10 off, with the third segment being partner exercises (therefore twice as long), and then the last segment is 3 minutes to do, like, 50 jumping jacks, 30 squat front kicks, 10 burpees, 10 jump round kicks on the bag, 10 situps, and 50 mountain climbers or something. It ends up being a full 38 minutes of working out. I haven't wanted to throw up yet, though, so maybe it's ok

I'm off to an excellent start! Already left my pedometer at home... /sigh

So, there are a ton of things that I always would like to work on, but right now tae kwon do is going to be top of the list. My husband and I are testing for our black belts for the realz on Aug 15th. We know all of the form, we know how to spar, we go to class all the time, and mostly I feel ready. But not completely, because one of our testing requirements is a running jump side kick board break, and I'm not exactly sure I can do that right now, as I'm not excellent at aiming or jumping when I kick. Also I keep getting kicked in the head during sparring and not being able to reciprocate, because I'm tired or my hip flexors aren't strong enough to reach my foot all the way up there. Super frustrating, because sometimes all you want to do is kick someone back. Consequently, TKD goals. Main goal: Get ready for black belt testing / kick moar people in the head / make my legs awesome Subgoal 1: Do 50 fast kicks/leg and 25 slow press kicks/leg 5 days/week for round, front, and side kicks. Our main instructor is an awesome sparrer, and he assures us that doing a bunch of kicks with excellent posture and your elbow tucked *just so* to your side is the best thing for oblique strength, kick height, and kick power. I totally feel it when I do them, but I don't do them enough. Hopefully this will give me the strength to get my kicks up over people's shoulders and into their ears I'm also going to try to aim well when I do these, but I don't have a bag at home, so it might be hard. Subgoal 2: Stretch legs for at least 15 minutes after every workout. Again, reaching up to people's heads is difficult. Having open hips should help with this, so I need to make it a priority to stretch for a decent amount of time every day. I'm often in a hurry to get home or to go eat after the gym, and I half-ass my stretching. No more! Subgoal 3: Get a week-long average of 10,000 steps every day. I sit a lot at my job, and I feel like it is quite a bit more difficult to do well at any activity when I've not done anything active all day. Even if this just inspires me to get up from my desk every 10 minutes and walk to the break room and back, it will be a win. Better TKD, better fitness, and also maybe better posture from breaking up the computer-slump. Life goal: During the work week, get into bed and turn off my lights at least 8 hrs and 15 minutes before my alarm is set to go off. I can't guarantee that I'll get 8 hours of sleep every night, but I sure can try. I'm always so tired by the time Friday rolls around, and I don't want to feel like that anymore, especially since we're trying to have kids, and after that there won't be enough sleep for a LONG time. These goals are all pretty linear, so grading is easy. 5/week or 10,000 steps - A 4/week or 9,000 steps - B 3/week or 8,000 steps - C 2/week or 7,000 steps - D 1/week or 6,000 steps - F PS: I super promise I finished my first challenge and I have stats now, I just haven't had the time to put them in yet.

I was following your last challenge, and I'll follow this one too Good luck with everything! I'm trying to figure out how to make my "be better!" overall life goal more specific, so I haven't posted anywhere yet. Right now I'm also leaning toward trying to be a better place for a baby to happen, as I just finished my last month of birth control on Friday and don't intend to buy more. We can take our prenatal vitamins together, yay!

Love me some pull ups! I used to be able to do 10, then I tweaked my shoulder and stopped doing any arm workouts for a while. I'm up to 6 or 7 again on my first set, then like 3 and 2 on my second and third. I finally realized that testing how many pull ups I can do after starting my workout with heavy DL is a bad plan, though. One of my goals is to eventually get up to 3 sets of 10, maybe with dips in between so I don't have to move off of the pull up/dip/leg raise apparatus

Update: Week of 5/18 Goal 1 - Ran three times last week, and ran the Bolder Boulder 10k on Monday 5/25. Finished in 1 hr, 0 minutes, 1 second. One second over an hour! I could have sprinted for like the last eighth of a mile and made it Overall, though, it was a good run. I got a side stitch around mile 3, but after I got rid of that I felt really good until mile 5, when I was convinced I was going to be one of those sad internet pictures of people who go to the bathroom all over themselves. Didn't run so well thinking about that, but it turned out just fine. Goal 2 - I lifted a lot of legs with my sister on Tuesday. Walking lunges, leg press, split squats, stiff legged deadlift, quad extensions, hack squats, and hamstring curls. Definitely sore until Friday, and unfortunately the hack squat machine bruised my shoulders. No more of those. Goal 3 - Protein was good all week. We had a lot of ground beef - tacos twice, hamburgers, sloppy joes. That's what happens when you get ground beef at Costco in a 6 lb package, I guess Also my calories were good until my friends decided to feed us a ton of spaghetti on Sunday for carb loading. I don't usually eat a TON of carbs, so that might have contributed to my distress during the run, lol. Life goal - Stuck with the meal plan all week! Yay I really am sad about that one extra second. My goal this year was under an hour, and the fact that I was SO SO SO close makes me a little mad. It was a good time, though. I'm mostly ok with it. Got a nice tee shirt out of it!

Schreib mir fur Deutsch auch an! My vocab has regressed to probably a 2 year old level, unfortunately, but practicing is the best help! Case in point, I can NOT figure out where "fur Deutsch" should go in that sentence. Also how the heck did you find umlauts?

Teirin, I don't actually have a primary care physician right now. I have insurance which more than covers it, but I honestly don't know how to find a doctor that I like. My husband and I went to a lady last year who was recommended to us by a friend, but I found her very stand-offish. She wasn't disagreeable, but also not really personable at all. I went to a yearly physical for work and clicked right away with the PA that did my exam (who unfortunately only works at the occupational health office), which made me realize that I don't have to settle for someone I don't want to talk to, but I don't know where to go from there. I know it probably isn't the best idea, but I might just wait until we are closer to kids/already pregnant to find a new doctor. Not that being pregnant will make it any easier to find someone nice, of course I just feel like it is a more specific need that might be easier to narrow down options for.

Update - Week of 5/11 Goal 1 - Did not get a long run in, but I did run 3 times. My weird blister/callus on the side of the ball of my right foot peeled off. It looks gross, and it kind of hurts when I run now, but the race is next Monday, so I guess I'll deal with it! I'm going to try to run Tuesday-Friday this week, even if they are short and on a treadmill. It is SOCOLD out right now, and raining, so no outside for me. Goal 2 - Lifted back/legs on Thursday. Did a bunch of reps with DL up to 195, then went back down through the weights to 115 where I started. I think my grip is getting a little stronger! Then I did walking lunges, some sprints, and more leg press. Someday I'll make it to the gym to lift more than one day a week, so I have time to do more than three exercises. Goal 3 - I went over calories on Friday, because we went to Qdoba and I got a queso burrito. I haven't had a burrito with a tortilla in like a billion years, and although it was delicious, I was SUPER full afterwards. Not full enough to turn down a Haagen-Daz ice cream bar, though. On average, calories were right on target, so I made up for overeating on Friday by not being hungry for lunch on Sat at all. Protein has been good all the time. I got some Boar's Head lunchmeat and I've mostly been trying to eat that for snacks when I'm hungry, occasionally wrapped around some cheddar. Yum I think I'm getting slightly better at paying attention to my actual hunger signals, not just my "chips are delicious!" signals. Life goal - Again, pushed meals around, but no surprises, so no extra grocery trips. Qdoba on Friday was the only real deviation - we have a coupon book that the youth group at church was selling, and there are a bunch of BOGO coupons for Qdoba and TCBY. Hubs is always down for Qdoba. Always. Additional cool things - Had some friends over for dinner on Saturday and their 2 year old Micah met our chickens for the first time. Hi-larious. He was interested/terrified at the beginning, got cornered by the chickens behind their coop right before dinner, and ended up counting "One, Two, Three, GO!" trying to get them to race around the yard by the end of the night.

That is terrible! Some people are so stinking mean, I literally can't understand how they got that way. Hubby's boss says that two is the perfectly sustainable number of cats. Once you get to three the balance just tips the other way, and you're always like "yeah, sure, we could deal with another cat" (boss has 4 or 5 cats by now, lol). We weren't intending on getting another one either, but I couldn't stand the thought of her not having a home after going through that. I gave her a big fluffy stuffed duck to keep her company; she totally slept on it, and it was adorable She cried at night when we left her in the bathroom, but we have to keep her safe from our other cats until they get used to her, so she's quarantined. She just purrs the entire time you're in the room with her, though, I love it. I like the name too, it is my go-to for D&D and anything else I need a name for lately. I can't bring myself to save it and consider it as a name for future offspring, though, so I'm glad we have someone to give it to

My husband grew up with a Husky named Wolfgang von Orcslayer, I think that's a pretty fierce dog name. He was a sweetheart, though. We only have one male pet, and his name is Mithrandir, because he's grey. I'm going to have to agree with the Firefly names If you named your dog Jayne you could find him a cunning hat! There's always Thor for a blonde boy dog. Ooh, and our girl cat is named Caprica, after Caprica Six. She's a little bit round, so it isn't entirely fitting, but for a blonde girl dog it might fit; though on second thought, a lab might be way too friendly to live up to the namesake.

My husband and I just got a third cat, apparently. One of his coworkers was driving back to work from lunch yesterday and saw someone a few cars ahead of him toss a kitten out of the window into the road. Who does that?!? I'm so mad just thinking about it. Luckily for the kitten, said coworker is a good person, and he stopped and chased the kitten down, took her to the vet, and got her poor little face stitched up. The vet says she'll be fine, but the guy who saved her has 4 dogs and no cat knowledge, so he asked us to take her. She's a super tiny tortiseshell kitten, but old enough to know how to eat wet food and figure out a litter box, thankfully. We're thinking we'll name her Nymeria. Tough little survivor Our other cats are Caprica and Mithrandir, and our chickens are Rosie (because of her fuzzy Brahma feet), Starbuck, Boomer, and Arkady, so we've got to stick with the sci-fi/fantasy names. Mith is so outnumbered by girls now, though. Poor dude. I was going to post a picture, but the only one I have is like 3 times the file size limit, and I can't figure out how to make it smaller. Boo. Take my word for it, she's cute

There is just always a HUGE list, haha. Mostly it is things like "actually practice playing the piano", "learn how to code so your future kids don't think you're dumb", "practice your German so you don't forget it forever", and a bunch more things that are of indeterminate time/effort. Another block, honestly, is body issues, in that I'm finally being consistent about focusing on what I can do and not just how I look, and I'm terrified of what having a baby will do to my body. I know it is possible/probable that nothing terrible will happen, and I have friends who are in even better shape now than they were before they had kids, but it still scares me that I won't be able to deal with it. I'm sure it will work out, and it helps that one of my coworkers keep showing me adorable pictures of his 7-month old daughter every day

Thanks for all of the suggestions! Like I said before, just running outside is making a huge difference, and I think it is a combination of a bunch of the things that were pointed out. - I'm less tense outside because I'm not concentrating on my speed, etc, so I feel like my shoulders are looser, and I'm breathing better - I'm not concentrating on how fast I should be going, just how I feel, so I'm not pushing too hard, or speeding up to make up time/because I'm bored - On the same note, it is much easier to slow down or switch my stride when I get a side stitch running outside than it is on a treadmill. I always kind of feel like a failure when I have to slow the dang thing down to recover. - I'm already home when I get done running, so I stretch for longer (and I'm incorporating more hip stretches), because I'm not in a hurry to get out of the gym I actually made it 7 miles all at once last week, and I felt pretty good afterwards. Thanks again for the help!

@weaver - I might make it to 8 miles all at once. We'll see how my 7.5 mile run this week goes. At least I know now that I can definitely do 6.2 miles, which is really all I need for the race. I'm pretty stoked for black belt I might have to modify things a bit, though. Oddly, my husband is the one agitating for a baby sooner rather than later - he wants me to skip the last month of birth control in my fridge and go straight to a month of clearing out my system so we can get going, lol. I'm still stuck between excited and absolutely terrified. If things go as planned, I might have to be stop at our black belt test and be like "so, I know we're supposed to spar a bunch at our belt testing, but can I opt out of that? Getting kicked in the stomach is probably not the best plan right now..."

Update - Week of 5/4 Goal 1 - Ran 7 whole miles all at once on 5/4! 1 hour 9 minutes, so not a bad pace. I stopped twice - once for like 15 seconds because I lost an earbud down my shirt and couldn't retrieve it while running, lol, and once because I thought I saw a chicken coop in someone's backyard and I had to jump up and down to look over their fence They did indeed have chickens, and they were HUGE compared to mine. I hadn't realized how small mine still are. Anyway, the run was pretty good. It was once again nice and cool out, and I ran the first 3.5 miles with my husband, which made it a little more interesting and easier to do. I only got one other run in, 3.5 miles, because I kept putting it off hoping the rain would stop, and then it was Friday already, so I ran at the gym. Treadmills really do suck. And it really did rain every day last week, and snowed on Saturday/Sunday! Crazy weather for May. Goal 2 - Lifted back on Tuesday, legs on Friday after running. I only did walking lunges (3x12 with 35# kb in each hand) and leg press (narrow stance superset with the widest stance the platform would let me have, 3x12 @ 230/270/320#). I'm definitely still sore, but I'm sore in all the right places Goal 3 - I went WAY the heck over calories last Tuesday (by like, 750 calories) because we had a delicious snack at work and then bbq chicken pizza and cookies and cream ice cream at board game night. Our host was very disappointed to not have Bluebell ice cream, and he's right, it really is way better. Not getting Listeria is good, though. I also was good on protein all but one day, because I didn't eat dinner due to a migraine. Up until then I was on track. Life goal - We pushed some meals around (no dinner Wednesday, moved beef pho to Friday because pho day has to be rainy and cold, and had an unexpected friend bring pizza over on Saturday), but it was less meals rather than different meals, so I didn't make any extra trips to the grocery store. Also, since we didn't eat shepherd's pie on Saturday, now I have dinner ready for tonight AND Wednesday. Leftovers are the best, I love not cooking Additional cool things - I finally made a photobook out of our wedding pictures (from two years ago) for both of our moms for Mother's Day. Well received presents, for sure. And now I won't get asked about it every month