Yes, it has been awhile...
I have been pretty busy of late. 4th quarter is our very busy time of year at my company. Between that, workouts, a bout of strep and tendinitis in my knee, the Thanksgiving holiday and the shortest date in history my time and energy have had a premium placed on them. However, after prodding from maxauburn and octothorpe, I figured I better get my butt in gear.
I will not talk about work. Work is work and I will have my annual review sometime in the next two weeks. To be honest, there was not a lot I could highlight this year as to my performance. Nothing new or outstanding to report. I did my job and that is all they are going to get from me. Yes, I am sick of it. DAMN I still talked about work!
The strep and tendinitis put a kink in my workout schedule for awhile there. I tried to keep swimming, but the antibiotic just wore me down (they tend to do that to me). I had avoided going to the doctor as it just seemed to be allergy that would not go away. However, when the throat was hurting for the 5th day in a row with no improvement, I knew I had to relent. Actually, I was surprised it was strep as the soreness of my throat was the only real symptom. I had no fever and my glands were not that swollen. I actually thought maybe I had a minor sinus infection with the drainage causing my sore throat. Nope, it was strep. Bah!
About the time I started to recover from the strep, I was suddenly hit with tendinitis in my right knee. It can happen to me, normally after some kind of rigorous activity, but this time I was flummoxed as to what it could be. It was so sore that even swimming was out of the question as I could not kick off the wall of the pool on my turns without really sharp pain running through my body. So I did not go to the gym much for nearly 3 weeks. This would probably not have been so bad except when I am sick, I tend to allow my diet to just go out the window. I did not TOTALLY lose it, but I did allow myself some things I had been denying myself for months, from mac-n-cheese to an In-N-Out burger (which actually tasted awful). The result? I gained nearly 10 pounds in just under 3 weeks. I know now I can not slack like this at all.
So this week, the knee is finally fine and I am back on track. I am ramping up my workout by going to the office early to use the newly opened fitness facility there for a quick cardio in the morning post-breakfast. I only made it once this shortened work week, but that day I was much more energized than I had been for awhile. I am still going to my gym after work as well, but am mixing other classes in with the swimming, especially spin. I still have not started working with weights, but I will start that after the first of the year. My doctor wants me still to concentrate more on fat loss and making it through the holidays without gaining more weight back.
This Thanksgiving I probably had my healthiest holiday meal ever. I went to Chris and Dan' where we had very non-traditional turkey enchiladas, one pan sour cream and one New Mexico mole. I made a sugar free pumpkin pie so I could have a desert, but Dan made a chocolate chile pecan pie. I also made a warm black bean chipotle queso dip and modified the recipe to make it Perfect 10 friendly and served it with veggie dippers instead of tortilla chips. Chris made a cranberry salsa and we had sweet potato planks with cumin and ground pasillo chile. I ate a full plate, but made sure half of it was the raw veggies.
Photos for some reason are not working - ARGH!
The pie is a story itself. I have never made a pumpkin pie where the top did not crack. All the hints online pointed at cutting the bake time by 5 minutes and allowing the pie to cool in the oven by cracking the door and turning it off. That way the custard continues to cook and set without the sudden cooling on a counter top. Well I did this and went back to prepping things for my dip. I thought the pie smelled wonderful, but it seemed as if it was still baking as the smell was more a caramelized smell than anything else. I checked and low-and-behold, I had not turned the oven off. I had turned it all the way up. The pie was a nice toasty brown on top and was looking more like a pumpkin quiche. It wound up ok that day, but leftover yesterday was not so good. I threw the remainder out.
Dinner was a late day affair, and I had been invited to join my friend Brett at the Round-Up for some two stepping "8-ish". I left Chris and Dan's at 7 thinking I could stop at a Starbucks or somewhere to get coffee since I had got some earlier that day when I did a supermarket run to get chipotles in adobo. Wrong - NOTHING was open except for the bars on Cedar Springs, so it was me and the bar staff at 7. Luckily, the DJ working that night, Roger, is a good friend of mine so we were able to catch up a bit. I did take some time out to send a video message to cuboz, but was very glad when Brett and his partner-lite Christopher (yes there is a story there) showed up. Actually, several of my dancing friends wound up there so it was a nice night of dancing until I started to crash about 10.
Friday I had arranged a lunch date with a guy I had been chatting with on bear411. We were able to hold a conversation through lunch, but it was all innocuous stuff, nothing too deep. We finished eating within about 30 minutes, so I was about to suggest we go to the Starbucks that is right down the street to continue talking and he announced, "It was nice to meet you, but I need to go." Wow - I have never this quickly discovered a lack of a spark with someone in my life. I was glad I had a hard spin class late yesterday to get that worked out of my system.
Maybe, just maybe, one of these days I will have a date with a man that will lead to something positive...
I will not talk about work. Work is work and I will have my annual review sometime in the next two weeks. To be honest, there was not a lot I could highlight this year as to my performance. Nothing new or outstanding to report. I did my job and that is all they are going to get from me. Yes, I am sick of it. DAMN I still talked about work!
The strep and tendinitis put a kink in my workout schedule for awhile there. I tried to keep swimming, but the antibiotic just wore me down (they tend to do that to me). I had avoided going to the doctor as it just seemed to be allergy that would not go away. However, when the throat was hurting for the 5th day in a row with no improvement, I knew I had to relent. Actually, I was surprised it was strep as the soreness of my throat was the only real symptom. I had no fever and my glands were not that swollen. I actually thought maybe I had a minor sinus infection with the drainage causing my sore throat. Nope, it was strep. Bah!
About the time I started to recover from the strep, I was suddenly hit with tendinitis in my right knee. It can happen to me, normally after some kind of rigorous activity, but this time I was flummoxed as to what it could be. It was so sore that even swimming was out of the question as I could not kick off the wall of the pool on my turns without really sharp pain running through my body. So I did not go to the gym much for nearly 3 weeks. This would probably not have been so bad except when I am sick, I tend to allow my diet to just go out the window. I did not TOTALLY lose it, but I did allow myself some things I had been denying myself for months, from mac-n-cheese to an In-N-Out burger (which actually tasted awful). The result? I gained nearly 10 pounds in just under 3 weeks. I know now I can not slack like this at all.
So this week, the knee is finally fine and I am back on track. I am ramping up my workout by going to the office early to use the newly opened fitness facility there for a quick cardio in the morning post-breakfast. I only made it once this shortened work week, but that day I was much more energized than I had been for awhile. I am still going to my gym after work as well, but am mixing other classes in with the swimming, especially spin. I still have not started working with weights, but I will start that after the first of the year. My doctor wants me still to concentrate more on fat loss and making it through the holidays without gaining more weight back.
This Thanksgiving I probably had my healthiest holiday meal ever. I went to Chris and Dan' where we had very non-traditional turkey enchiladas, one pan sour cream and one New Mexico mole. I made a sugar free pumpkin pie so I could have a desert, but Dan made a chocolate chile pecan pie. I also made a warm black bean chipotle queso dip and modified the recipe to make it Perfect 10 friendly and served it with veggie dippers instead of tortilla chips. Chris made a cranberry salsa and we had sweet potato planks with cumin and ground pasillo chile. I ate a full plate, but made sure half of it was the raw veggies.
Photos for some reason are not working - ARGH!
The pie is a story itself. I have never made a pumpkin pie where the top did not crack. All the hints online pointed at cutting the bake time by 5 minutes and allowing the pie to cool in the oven by cracking the door and turning it off. That way the custard continues to cook and set without the sudden cooling on a counter top. Well I did this and went back to prepping things for my dip. I thought the pie smelled wonderful, but it seemed as if it was still baking as the smell was more a caramelized smell than anything else. I checked and low-and-behold, I had not turned the oven off. I had turned it all the way up. The pie was a nice toasty brown on top and was looking more like a pumpkin quiche. It wound up ok that day, but leftover yesterday was not so good. I threw the remainder out.
Dinner was a late day affair, and I had been invited to join my friend Brett at the Round-Up for some two stepping "8-ish". I left Chris and Dan's at 7 thinking I could stop at a Starbucks or somewhere to get coffee since I had got some earlier that day when I did a supermarket run to get chipotles in adobo. Wrong - NOTHING was open except for the bars on Cedar Springs, so it was me and the bar staff at 7. Luckily, the DJ working that night, Roger, is a good friend of mine so we were able to catch up a bit. I did take some time out to send a video message to cuboz, but was very glad when Brett and his partner-lite Christopher (yes there is a story there) showed up. Actually, several of my dancing friends wound up there so it was a nice night of dancing until I started to crash about 10.
Friday I had arranged a lunch date with a guy I had been chatting with on bear411. We were able to hold a conversation through lunch, but it was all innocuous stuff, nothing too deep. We finished eating within about 30 minutes, so I was about to suggest we go to the Starbucks that is right down the street to continue talking and he announced, "It was nice to meet you, but I need to go." Wow - I have never this quickly discovered a lack of a spark with someone in my life. I was glad I had a hard spin class late yesterday to get that worked out of my system.
Maybe, just maybe, one of these days I will have a date with a man that will lead to something positive...