2 Miles

One of the reasons I have loved living in California is how inviting our neighborhood is for getting outside and walking the dogs in the lovely sunshine and seeing all the cute California homes. There is a wonderful loop that the dogs like to take through our residential neighborhood and I have been curious for some time about the length of the walk so this morning I finally decided pace it out with my car. What do you know, the loop comes out to be one mile exactly! Well, that couldn't be any more perfect. Since I am a person that likes to see and measure progress, I'm going to print out some kind of table that measures out 100 miles or so so that I can mark them off each time the dogs and I take a loop. I figure I will give myself some kind of reward everytime I get to a certain mark. This afternoon the dogs and I just took TWO LOOPS! Cordy was really not excited when we got back to the house and kept on going for a second time around! Oh well, she needs to get in shape just like Mommy does. I'll let you know when I hit my first 25 mile mark!

Warming Up

After crawling out of bed from a short nap this evening and complaining once again about how cold our house was and how lame our heater was, Don decided to get the ladder out and give our heating vents a closer inspection. What he discovered has us feeling rather foolish. We have been freezing all winter long because there is a second grate inside the first grate in all of our vents which were closed all around the house! Well that explains why my gas bill was $260 last month and yet I still couldn't heat the house over 60. Dumb! Once he opened up all the vents, we were warmed up within about 15 minutes.

Additionally, we had some severe windstorms today and lost power for a few hours. Not only am I bored from being unemployed and being home by myself all day, but on top of that take away my power. I couldn't watch t.v., couldn't call anyone, had no computer or internet, couldn't do laundry and brrrrrrrrr no heat. So the dogs got to have a nice afternoon nap with Mommy in the big bed while she read her book and snuggled to keep warm.

With all of the distratctions out of the way, it did give me a little time for self reflection and got me motivated and thinking about some personal goals. Let's just say I have a new exercise and fitness plan to try out in the next couple of weeks. On top of structured exercise I want to try to incorporate more fun physical activities in my life like our hike to Paramount Ranch the other week. Tomorrow, weather permitting, Katy and I are going to try out the off leash dog park in our neighborhood. I hear it's supposed to be pretty nice and I'm looking forward to getting out of the house and getting some fresh air.

Forecast

I'm trying to figure out how I ever got used to spending the majority of my days being rained on. We have definitely entered a wet season. Don't get me wrong, I am not so self absorbed to be ungrateful for the rain. We definitely need it. And we are getting plenty of it. It has been raining this entire week and is supposed to go right on through this weekend. But man is it inconvenient. The dogs are going crazy from being cooped up but won't even go outside to go to the bathroom despite the fact that I have had Cordy's rain coat on her the entire week. I don't own a hooded raincoat anymore and I refuse to buy one to use a couple of weeks out of the year. Not to mention that my house with zero insulation is freezing. With highs in the fifties (currently 47 degrees) my heater is working nonstop to maintain a temperature somewhere in the sixties. I actually had to wear a stocking cap to bed the other night.

So as not to be an entire blog of spoiled California Girl rants, I will end on a positive note. All of this rain has at least inspired me to do a complete overhaul of the Gaming Room and unbury my treadmill. Dog walking and hiking are definitely out for the time being but at least I can still get some cardio in at home. So last night from 9:00 to Midnight, I spent tidying up, putting away leftover dishes and snack items, reshelving all of the games and books, designating new spaces for gaming supplies, and making the exercise equipment more accessible. It's been many a month since I've seen that room looking in this good a shape. Now I just need to run over everything with a dust rag and broom and it will actually be a space I feel like spending time in outside of just gaming.

Jogcast

So I've heard a couple people mention of late about how they use podcasts as a source of entertainment/inspiration to help them in their exercise. I decided to check this phenomenon out myself. After doing a little research on Itunes, I've selected a couple of programs that I can't wait to try - Podrunner and JogTunesIndie Podcast. Both are podcasts of a collection of songs organized by beats per minute for your running/high intensity workout. The first I believe is more of a collection of techno-inspired music while the other is lyrical songs by Indie artists. I subscribed to both and I can't wait to try them out on a walk/run.

I also discovered after doing a bit more searching that you can download entire yoga workouts also. One that I might be interested in trying is Elsie's Yoga class which features over 60 separate classes. Right now I'm still really excited about my Rodney Yee Yoga DVD for flexibility. But when I get bored and want to incorporate a little more variety I can't wait to try some of these out. And the best part about all of these podcasts...? They're FREE! Considering most Yoga classes/clubs in LA will run you upwards of $100 a month, I would say that's a pretty good deal.

Does anybody else have any good podcasts that you subscribe to that I should try?

A Year of Cooking Light

It's an impressive blog title. I know. I'll get to that in a minute.

So, I have to say that I had an awesome day. I am still continuing along aggressively with the job hunting. It's so much work I have to say not just in terms of actual labor but also in the enormous amount of energy it takes to remain focused and positive. I still feel pretty good about where I'm at. It's not that employers don't want me. It's that I'm still searching for what I want. And eventually the two will match up. O.K. so there may have been a couple of opportunities out there that I did want that didn't swing my way, yet at least. Let's just hope they keep swinging. So, if that gives you an idea of the mantras that I go through on a daily basis you can imagine my response when Katy called me up this afternoon and said, "I want to get out of the house. Would you like to join me?" My response of course was, "YES! God, Yes!"

The only important thing on the agenda was to get some lunch as it was about that time and we were both getting hungry. So we decided at first that we wanted to try this restaurant that I had been to before called Tapas. It is a place where they serve appetizer sized dishes and you order a few different things and split them amongst each other. However, when we got there, we discovered that it was locked and that they are only open for dinner. Dumb! So on to plan B. Drive down Ventura and see what we find. Well, we only got a block before we saw a sign that said Pinot Bistro and we veered sharply just in time to make it into the parking lot. And what an exciting find this place was. Everything on the menu looked exquisite. Katy ordered the French Onion Soup and a Roast Beef Sandwich. I had the Fish and Chips with a Raspberry Lemonade. It was all top notch and we can't wait to go back again sometime and sample other things from the menu.

Afterwards, we took advantage of the location and decided to drive by Katy's community garden plot which was only a few blocks away. So I got to see all of the things she has planted and am getting excited now about trying another herb garden out soon with my planters in the back yard again. Then, I took her by the Produce Mart that is by my house where I get all my fruits and veggies. Since we both read the book Animal, Vegetable, Mineral together, we have both been making a concerted effort to buy as much locally grown foods as possible. Luckily, this is much easier to do in California than it is many other places. So that was the basic extent of our Girls' afternoon outing. While everything we did I thoroughly enjoyed, I don't think it would have mattered how we spent our time as much as I loved the opportunity to just get away from the pressures of job hunting for a little while, treat myself with some very fine company, and not be sitting around the house waiting for the phone to ring. It was awesome.

But the day does not end at 4:00 p.m. and by the time we finished the afternoon Jeremy was ready for some socialization as well. So the four of us this time met up for dinner and after dropping Don off back at home for an early bed time, we headed down the street to the Courtyard Marriott where our friend Rian is staying while he is in town filming an episode of Super Nanny. This is the exact same hotel that Don and I stayed at when we were down here interviewing for his job and it is a really nice place. Katy and I were both eager to get a swim in at their heated outdoor pool and it was so awesome. So there we are, 9:00 at night doing the backstroke on top of a four story building and looking up at the moon and the stars shining bright over our heads and I had one of those moments where it hit me again -- this time last year, never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought that I would be living in a place where I could swim outside at night in January. And since Katy and I had the pool all to ourselves there we were swimming along for a good while doing leisurely laps along side each other deep in chatting and storytelling mode.

Eventually, however, we decided to take advantage of not only the fun and relaxing aspect of the pool but the physical benefits as well and we pushed ourselves to do a couple more challenging laps (i.e., full aggressive breast strokes as opposed to back strokes and doggy paddling during conversation). And as we did so we both became painfully aware that we are sorely out of shape. Not that we didn't know this before, but there's nothing like slapping a bikini on a woman and putting her to an aerobic test to really come face to face with the state of things. There's just not much room for denial about anything in a bikini.

One of the things that most people who know me well know about me is that I am an extremely positive thinker. I tend to always cast the best light on everything including past memories. If somebody remembers the glass being half empty, I remember it being half full. Well, we all have certain lights that we cast on things and they are not always reality. What this means for me is that I usually tend to think I am a healthy person because I have a concept of myself as an athlete and exercise is important to me. Whether or not I carry out a plan to completion I always come back to it. The problem is I never carry it out. I am always getting back on the horse but not staying on the horse and over time my aerobic health and strength has deteriorated to a condition of being winded during light activity. I am starting to feel the effects of a body that is never going to get younger and only going to get older. I have to choose my exercises more carefully like things that aren't too high impact or stressful on the joints.

Likewise, I tend to think that I have a healthy diet because Don and I enjoy mostly healthy foods. When we cook at home, we stay away from processed foods, use lots of fresh meat and produce and primarily prepare low fat, low salt, and low cholesterol foods. The problem is, when we don't cook at home, we almost always turn to high fat, high salt, and high cholesterol foods for the quick fix. Thus they cancel each other out. And that doesn't even factor in snacks and drinks.

So I guess here I am admitting to myself that I am not actually living up to the healthy self-image that I have of myself. It's great to have a positive self-image, but I think that the real thing must be even better. And while the ultimate goal is not necessarily to look smoking hot in a bikini (although that is certainly a bonus!) you can't exactly lie to yourself and tell yourself that you look smoking hot when it's staring you back in the mirror. All this leads to the obvious conclusion that it's time for some improvements.

Which brings me back to the blog title. A little more long winded than I planned but I guess that's what happens when you use social networking sights like these as your own journaling tool for self-revelation. So when I got back home and was lying awake in bed thinking about what kind of changes I was going to make, I decided instead of lying awake and thinking about them, I would actually get up and start working on them. I had already started a project, primarily to give myself something productive to do with all of this time I have at home by myself, of doing a full year's worth of meal plans. I am a person who does best when I have a concrete plan and stick to it. And while it takes a lot of energy to cook every night, it takes even more energy sometimes to plan it and do the grocery shopping. So I decided to get myself one step ahead by planning out the entire year.

Now this is dinners only mind you. But still an enormous task nonetheless. And to stay on track healthwise, I decided to select all of my recipes from Cooking Light. Not only do I have a couple of their annual cookbooks to start with but for Christmas I got a sordid collection of used issues from my sister as well as a new subscription from my grandparents. I'm keeping track of the recipes and actual meal plan in my Master Cook software program which is perfect for this kind of thing. And I recently finished the entire meal plan. I have 4-5 recipes planned out for each week. That accounts for a couple of nights a week when we may not be home, go out to eat, or eat up leftovers. By no means do I expect that I will ever stick to this plan 100%, but at least I have a plan now. I may want to change things or modify them here or there, try new recipes from other sources or whatnot. But at least I have a plan in place to fall back on when I don't have the time to take the extra steps.

So tonight, I decided to get up and take the extra step to not just have the recipes picked out but to print them out and start filing them in a notebook divided up in one week blocks. That way as each week comes I can just go to the notebook, pull out that week's recipes, and make my grocery list. Also, this makes it much easier for Don to get involved with the cooking as he can see what the plan is also and doesn't have to be so dependent on me to tell him what we are having for dinner and where to find the recipe, etc. So at this exact moment, I have 14 weeks worth of recipes, planned, printed and filed. And I am feeling pretty darn good about that. So there is a good start and a solid plan for healthful eating. Maybe tomorrow I'll start thinking about exercise.