The Friday Five – Saturday Edition

Wohoo!  Made it to another weekend 🙂  I started this post on Friday, but didn’t quite finish.  I got to #2 and picked up at #3 Saturday night.  Here goes…

1.  I have hit my reading goal for 2014!  After staying up way too late reading every day this week, I hit my 24 book goal.  I’m hoping I can keep on rolling through December and add a couple more titles to the list. Check out what I’ve read here https://mypursuitofhappinessandskinnyjeans.wordpress.com/books-read-in-2014/ and feel free to suggest some books I should add to my reading list.
2.  I’m loving my new CrossFit kicks!  Both the nano4s and my lifters ares awesome…and I seem to have started a new trend…the #footsie.  Check out Reebok Canada’s instagram post:

3.  The AirDyne is the devil!  Friday’s WOD was snatch balance work and then squat snack or hang power snatch, depending on what your ability.  I did the HPS since the snatch is not my best lift, so rather than push it with a squat snatch, I just worked on getting a solid lift from the hang.  It felt good and I’m happy with my progress.  After the snatch work, it was time for the MetCon…10 minutes on the AirDyne, 12 seconds max watts, 48 seconds recovery.  Oh.  My.  God!  It was hell.  By the end of the 10 minutes I could barely pedal that bad boy for 12 seconds.  My ass was killing me and I’m very afraid of how I’m going to feel walking tomorrow!   I guess that’s why they call the AirDyne Satan’s Tricycle.

4.  I need to get my golf stuff organized.  I’m off to Arizona on Thursday!  I can’t believe it’s only 5 days.  I have not swung a club since September.  I’m not even sure where all of my golf stuff is!  Guess I better spend some time tomorrow getting my stuff together, figuring what I’m taking with me, and I should probably hit Golf Town and buy some golf balls!  I’m nervous and excited to head south, out of this cold weather that has hit, and play a few rounds of golf.

5.  I made the most delicious pasta dish for dinner tonight. French onion soup pasta from Katie at The Rose Record.  Oh my god….so delicious.  It seemed to take forever to caramelize the onions, but totally worth it.  So awesome. Make this dish soon!

Okay…now it’s late and I’m off to bed.  I have a date with the design team at Home Depot tomorrow morning at 10am to talk kitchens.

How’s your weekend going?  Let’s hope tomorrow goes by nice and slow…

Motivational Monday

Another Monday!  The weekends just never seem long enough, but I’m actually excited that today is Monday, because that means I get to go to CrossFit tonight….and I can try out my new shoes!  The UPS man came by my office again today and look what he dropped off…

Aren’t they pretty!  I can’t wait to put these bad boys to the test.  Tonight’s WOD has a boatload of thrusters in it…both in the strength portion and in the MetCon when we will do Jackie (1000m row, 50 thrusters, 30 pull-ups).  I hate thrusters with a passion.  Not sure new shoes are enough to change that, but I’m willing to give it a try!

Everyone at the gym keeps telling me that these shoes will change my life.  I sure hope so!
Do you have lifters…are they as good as everyone says they are?

Happy Monday.  Let’s hope the week flies by 🙂

 

The Friday Five

Happy Friday!  Let’s get right to it!

1.  I have been a very bad blogger lately.  By the time I get home from work, eat dinner, do a few things around the house, go to CrossFit, come home and shower, I have zero energy or motivation to write a blog post.  Plus, I really haven’t had that much to say lately.  My life is rather dull, I’m afraid!

2.  I have also fallen so far behind in the Photo101 course.  I was doing alright the first week, and then the wheels fell off.  Ideally, you are to take a new photo each day that relates to the prompts.  Well, by the time I get home from work, it’s dark…which makes it difficult to take decent pictures.  I think I am going to cheat and this weekend look back through all the pics I’ve taken and see if I can find some that relate to the prompts we’ve been given that I have missed:  connect, landmark, natural world, warmth, mystery, pop of colour, architecture, moment, swarm and landscape.

3.  My hands are so sore!  I wasn’t feeling the greatest on Monday (had a headache all day), so I cancelled my CrossFit class and switched to Tuesday night instead.  Well, Tuesday’s workout was a tough one!  Strength wasn’t too bad – ring rows (since I still can’t do an unassisted strict pull-up :()  and GHD sit-ups.  The MetCon is where things got fun:
I did the beginner lever, since it was going to add up to 60 pull-ups, which is more than I have ever done RX in a WOD (I did 45 once!).  I also used a band on a rack for the push-ups, since 60 RX push-ups was unlikely.  Things were going along well – if you define well as exhausting – until the last set of pull-ups when my hands ripped on rep 54.  I ended up doing the last 6 reps as ring rows because my hands hurt so much.  I can’t remember what my time was – I really need to get better and putting my workouts into my MyWOD app!  I went home, took the loose skin off my tears and coated them with polysporin.

Wednesday night’s WOD had toes to bar in both the strength and metcon.  We also did deadlifts in the strength work, and just holding the bar hurt my hands – not just the torn spots, but my calluses at the base of my fingers as well.  In the end I asked for a substitute for the T2B in the metcon (which was 20-15-10-5 DB squat cleans, T2B, box jumps).  I just couldn’t take the pain.  Instead my coach game me candlesticks.  I only learned after the WOD what they were…lying on my back on the floor, holding the rig, pike up legs and then reach them up the rig as high as you can get them…basically like this:
My hands are still sore and there are more pull-ups in today’s WOD…I think I will do the beginner ring rows again and try to let my hands heal.

To help prevent this from happening again, I ordered a pair of Natural Grip wraps.  I have had my eye on them for a while, but finally broke down and ordered a pair.  It will be the best $17 I ever spent if they work like they say they do.  Natural Grips were recently featured on Shark Tank and they got a deal!!!

4.  I got some new CrossFit kicks!  Reebok has a Friend’s and Family 40% off sale last weekend and I picked up some new Nano 4s.  Aren’t they pretty!
I also got some lifters…but they haven’t been shipped yet.  Can’t wait for those to arrive!

5.  It’s only 2 weeks until I go to Arizona for the EWGA Cup.  I really should get out to a golf dome or simulator some time in the next little while.  I will have been 3 months since I’ve played golf when the competition starts and that can’t lead to good things.  Hopefully it will work out I can get out once here before I go and we have a practice round scheduled the Friday before the competition starts, so hopefully I will remember how to swing a club!

 

Happy weekend!

Got any big plans?  

A Thing From the Web

 

This morning as I ate my breakfast at my desk and scrolled through my Facebook feed I saw a video that made me smile.

Hope you get a kick out of it too.

 

In other news, I am very behind in my Photo101 assignments.  Ideally, I will catch up a bit when I go out for lunch today (since my family had seconds at dinner last night and I have no leftovers for lunch 😦 ), but more realistically I will play catch up on the weekend.  I owe images for Connect, Landmark, The Natural World and Warmth.  Hopefully I can get out at lunch and maybe find a few things that will fit.

Happy Thursday!

I can smell the weekend coming!  

Reverse Menu Planning

It’s Sunday night and that means the weekend is almost over 😦

Normally Sunday means menu planning, grocery shopping and usually some food prep. Today, that wasn’t the case.

Last night hubs and I went to the movies to see St Vincent, and on the way home we were going to make a quick stop at the grocery store to get some bacon for breakfast this morning. When we got to the grocery store parking lot, there were only 3 cars in the whole lot. I made a random comment that it was too bad we didn’t have a list so we could do all of our shopping in the empty store. We ended up deciding to wing it and just bought a bunch of stuff and would figure out the menu plan after.

I made sure we got what was needed for some cauliflower fried rice and Pizza Spaghetti Pie. We also picked up some steaks, chicken breasts, pork chops, a pork tenderloin, eggs, fruit, veggies and stuff for the kids lunches this week. It was our quickest grocery trip in a while. In and out in about 20 minutes. It was awesome!

Tonight for dinner we had steak, roasted sweet potato rounds, and some balsamic asparagus.

I reverse engineered our menu for the week based on the groceries we bought and we will be eating very well!
Monday: Pizza Spaghetti Pie
Tuesday: Chicken Caesar Salad
Wednesday: BBQ Pork Cauliflower Fried Rice
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: Pork Tenderloin – I will have to figure out what to serve as a side dish for this, but I’ve got a few days to do that!

The Photo101 course didn’t have any new assignments over the weekend, but a new prompt has been released for tomorrow – “Connect”. I will have to figure out how I will capture that concept in an image. Hopefully I can get out at lunch and find a good shot.

Now, I should sign off and go to bed. I need to leave for work earlier than usual tomorrow. I’ve got a conference call with clients in Sweden tomorrow, so we are starting a bit earlier than usual to account for the time differences.

How was your weekend?
Do anything exciting?

Let’s hope the week flies by!

Photo 101 – Day 4: “Bliss”

Still playing catch up. Shot this just a few minutes ago. Tonight, this is my bliss:

A roaring fire, a glass of wine, and some Walking Dead.

Life is good!

What’s your bliss?

Shot with iPhone5 camera. Unedited.

Photo 101 Day 1: “Home”

Slowly getting caught up on things.  I’m not exactly 100% satisfied with the images I captured today, but I will live with it.

One of our favourite spots at our house is our front patio.  We had it built the first spring we were in the house.  We spend lots of time out there when the weather is nice.  When the kids were little, we were able to keep an eye on them while they played.  Now we enjoy reading and just watching the world go by as we enjoy some time in the sun.

This spot looks much better in the summer when the bushes are in bloom and isn’t not so dull.

If you are ever in my neighborhood and you see us sitting out, stop in for a visit and a beer.  A nice cold Corona tastes just great in these Muskoka chairs!

Photo taken with Nikon D50 on automatic (i’m too afraid to take it off auto!)

The Friday Five

It’s Friday!  Phew!

Here are this week’s Friday Five:

1.  Today is the last day for the Whole Life Challenge!   It’s been a pretty good 8 weeks, but I am so ready for this challenge to be over!  I don’t want to feel guilty for having a latte or a piece of cheese.  I just found the food restrictions of the challenge a bit too much.  Dairy and wheat don’t bother me, so eating them once in a while won’t hurt me.  I generally don’t eat much sugar, but I’ve missed making recipes with honey and maple syrup.  So glad I can have some of my favourite recipes again.  Everything in moderation, right!

We have the final measurements and WOD tomorrow morning.  I know on the scale at home as shown movement in the right direction, but I’m more interested in my measurements.  Hopefully they’ve moved in the right direction too.  I will know tomorrow at 10am!

2.  I had a rough day at CrossFit yesterday.  I had a few medical appointments yesterday morning and since I was working from home I planned to attend CrossFit at noon.  My appointments, of course, ran late (sitting in a lab for an hour didn’t help that!), so I only had time to rush home and change into my workout gear and head to the gym.  I grabbed a banana to eat on the drive and off I went.

The strength portion of the WOD was 3×2 push jerk and 3×2 split jerk  After the warm up and stretching, my partner Joanne and I started working on our push jerks. We did a few warm ups with the empty bar and then started on the push jerks.  We did 65, then 85, then 95.  I managed the first rep of the 95 okay, and then didn’t quite make the second rep and dropped the bar. Together Joanne and I grabbed the bar to put it back on the rack…apparently I said something like “nope” as I got the bar up to the rack, so Joanne came over and grabbed the bar and I fainted and dropped to the floor.

I had no idea what happened and it was a little confusing when I woke up and there were 4 people hovered around me.  I guess the lack of food in my system, holding my breath during my lift and the quick movement of my head from down my the bar to up by the rack was just a bit much and down I went.   I was no worse for wear, just had a bit of a sore jaw from the fall and I bit my tongue a bit.  Needless to say I didn’t get to the split jerks and I didn’t do the MetCon.  Instead, I chilled on the gym couch, had a bottle of water and eventually ate a Larabar to get my blood sugar up a bit.

I felt okay, but just to be safe I skipped hockey last night.

3.  Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse,,, I get home from the gym and this happened:
Yep, I came home to heat up my Eat Savage Butter Chicken, and sliced my thumb taking the lid off.  I was not impressed!  But the slice was totally worth it.  It was delicious.
And their paleo naan bread it to die for.  If they sold it as a separate side dish I would totally buy it and make sandwiches with it.

4.  My husband sent me this video…it’s hilarious!

This is especially funny for me since I’ve been having a lot of large group conference calls lately.  It’s not quite as bad as this, but there is some truth in there!

5.  A month from today I will be playing in the first round of the EWGA Cup in Scottsdale!

I really need to find some time between now and then to hit an indoor driving range.  Can’t let the swing get too rusty!

So glad it’s the weekend.

Got anything exciting planned?

Photo 101-Day 5: “Solitude”

I still need to do Day 1: Home and Day 4: Bliss, but here is today’s image for Solitude.

It’s not the sharpest picture since it was taken with my iPhone pretty much shooting directly into the sun and I’ve cropped it to try to make use of the rule of thirds.  Still, I really like this picture.  Jacko is a fun loving kid who loves to be the centre of attention, but he’s also happy just hanging by himself.

This picture of him fishing off the end of the dock at the cottage summer 2013 just makes me smile.

Photo 101-Day 3 “Water”

Still playing catch up.  Yesterday’s prompt was water. 

I headed out for a walk at lunch, armed with my iPhone5 camera and took a few pics of the Don River that runs through the valley behind my office.

It was a dull, grey day so the colours weren’t quite what I was hoping for.  I took a bunch of different shots along the river, using both vertical and horizontal orientations and for almost every set, i preferred the horizontal view. 

None of the images were stellar, but I’m willing to share, regardless!  Again, no idea if this is a good shot or not, since I have zero photo technical knowledge.  I have downloaded the Photo101 e-book and will try to read a bit each day and hopefully improve my photo taking skills.

Here’s my pic:

I like how the water seems to be moseying around the corner at the top right of the photo and then as it hits the rocks, the mini rapids form, and it seems to pick up speed. 

Even though I wasn’t completely satisfied with my pictures, it was nice to get away from my desk at lunch and go for a walk.  I should really remember this and try to get out for a walk at lunch more often.  A mid-day change of scenery made the afternoon seem not quite so long!