OK... Enough Already!

Pardon me, this will only take a minute...

Sweeping Declaration

I, Totally Random Jen, offer the most sincere and humble apologies to whatever cosmic force I have offended whether it be by action or inaction. I do not recall having been such a bugger-head* to anyone within the past while to be so deserving of the extra-ordinary karmic butt kicking I am currently experiencing but, clearly, it must have been really bad. I am truly sorry for whatever I did to offend.
Sorry.

Really.

* Work not included. Hey! That IS in my job description on occasion.

Ok, got that done.

Letting the air clear....

I know I have been absent for nearly a month but it wasn't intentional. I have been quite busy. And I do not want to rehash the drama of the past month- it is too much like complaining and I hate complaining.

Instead I will list a few AWESOME things that have happened this month: (I will try to insert pictures at a later date.)

1. 
   
   Our nephew and cousin Quentin turned 18! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! And he celebrated by letting his friends shave his head (weird Saskatchewan tradition?!) and getting his lip pierced. (I think his mom is kinda freaking.)
   


2. 
   
   We had friends and their kids travel all the way out to visit us for the weekend. Three hours is a long time in the car with kids that are not accustomed to travelling that far. We are grateful they like us well enough to have done it. We had a great weekend.



3. 
   
   I completed my first pair of socks and they are kinda fabulous. I call them my Ottawa Socks. Made with Chloe and Spud Fine sock yarn, in Lipstick.




4. 
   
   I got myself a KNIT CLUB! We call ourselves Knit Club. (First rule of Knit Club is no one talks about Knit Club.) Scott calls us the Knitwits.
   


5. 
   
   Antibiotics are great! Fabulous invention!



6. 
   
   To the nurses, doctors, dentists and vets who have presented the absolutely awesome news that "it isn't broken", "it isn't a concussion", "the teeth don't need to be pulled" and "30 days of antibiotics ought to clear that right up!"

February will be better. I am counting on it!

It was just that kind of day

I had a day at home with the kids yesterday so we went tobogganing. It was a gorgeous and mild winter day (+2C!). Friends of ours have the most beautiful property in a nearby valley with a great place to slide down a VERY steep hill. It was awesome.

Or it was awesome until Finn ran into a tree. The tree won that round but ultimately Finn is fine.

Happy New Year!

Life is good!

The Ugly Sweater/Shirt

It is a point of irony, and perhaps a sign of the coming Apocalypse, that I am trying to boost the Christmas spirit at my workplace today. I am hosting an Ugly Sweater/Shirt Contest. Bonus points go to those who wear Christmas sweaters.

What do you think? I think that I may have it clinched.

Yes, that is a homemade shirt complete with picture of me in elf hat (grinning like a lunatic) and holding my cats. Howard looks amusingly pissed at being forced to participate in such activities. I am wearing HUGE gobs of makeup, fake lashes, epilepsy inducing earrings and I spent an hour making my hair big and curly this morning. I was aiming for Crazy Christmas Cat Lady/Drag Queen but the kids think I look beautiful and wonder why I don't dress like this every day! Those are the kind eyes of love speaking, people.

I may be starting a whole new dressing up trend for Christmas... what do you think of Hallomas? I may just have investigate getting that trademarked!

Finn is 5!

It is a very exciting day today. Finn is now five years old. He is very excited about this fact. Here is a shot of the birthday boy playing with some of his new gifts.


The kids' school Christmas concert is today. So this will be a very busy day.

Finn's kindergarten teacher called me this morning at work to ask if it was okay if Finn could drink through a straw if he got really thirsty. Er... sure... why would you have to ask? I cautiously responded. Well it seems that Finn told his teacher that I had applied medicine to his face this morning and because of the medicine he was not allowed to drink all day. I can honestly understand why, if presented with this information, that a teacher might phone to ask questions. I was stifling laughter when I corrected that I had applied Blistex (a medicated lip balm) under his bottom lip and told him to not lick his lips. And that he could drink his fill with a straw or otherwise.

I had to wonder how many of these types of phone calls she has to make in a week dealing with kindergarten aged children. Too funny!

Look at what I found in my bed this morning.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FINN!

Olivia's Christmas Piano Recital

This is Olivia's second year of piano lessons. She is very musical and has been doing very well at her lessons. This is a video of her and her music teacher playing a duet.

Week 3.2- Um, yeah that wasn't much better

The Good news:

Total Time: 2h 15 min ( 9 h 46 min)
Total Distance: 48 km (209.3 km)
Weight Loss: no loss but no gain.

Week 3.2- The Done-Over ripe with puns
I'll just apologize now as apparently I am feeling pun-ny this morning.

Well, I suppose that was better than last week in that I got 3 workouts done instead of only 1. But I am still not doing 6 workouts per week. So I am going to do a realistic reassessment of this program- with knowledge of my own schedule for the next month- and lowering the bar to 4 workouts per week instead of six. I will reassess this again in January but for right now 6 is too much. I know myself well enough to know that if I have too many more weeks of failure to meet my 6 workouts I will quit in frustration. And not only will I quit the program but I will adopt a pessimistic "I had might as well buy and eat an entire box of Turtles attitude". So I reassessed that a successful week is now redefined as 4 days per week workout.

I am still very much enjoying riding the bike and I can honestly say that I have made some gains in the past 4 weeks. A 30 minute bike ride still gets me very sweaty and is an excellent full body cardio workout. I can pedal faster and require less rest stops, with the same resistance, which translates into my 30 minute workout now nets me a farther distance travelled. That makes me feel like I am not spinning my wheels without purpose. :)

My one legged workouts still suck but I have only one more week of those and Month 2 changes tactics and training focus.

The down side is that a 60 minute bike ride is still pretty hard on my butt. OUCHY! I bought myself the puffy bottomed shorts; they do help but not quite enough. (The butt to puff ratio is still heavily favoured to the butt so that little bit of puff can only do so much.) Bottom line (hehehe) my seat has not spent enough time in the saddle yet to have grown accustomed to that kind of hardship yet. I do not know when this magic will happen but it isn't in the fourth week of training- that I know for sure!

From a weight loss perspective I have gone no where. I have neither lost nor gained. Which I suppose is not totally a bad thing. My body really likes my current weight and even with all of this extra exercise will not give up a pound. Which is honestly disappointing. But in all fairness this cannot all be laid at the feet of the program. I ate very conscientiously for the first 2 weeks but the last two I have been back to some of my bad habits.

My in-laws were at my house this weekend and showed off their new slimmer frames. They have each lost 25+ pounds! Their success was accomplished with a dedicated focus on establishing proper eating habits (portion and content) and walking. It makes me happy to see my mother-in-law smiling in satisfaction and victory while recounting how her blood pressure has dropped 40 points (for the good) and she is contemplating asking her doctor to take her off blood pressure meds she has used for years. I am proud to see her clothes drapey on her now slimmer frame. I am contemplative at the idea of what that would feel like on me.

It should be simple- eat healthfully when you are hungry, stop when you are full, stay hydrated and exercise regularly. But for some reason some of us get some (or most) of those simple rules mixed up in our brains. I know the benefits of doing it and the costs of not and still I willfully make bad choices. This is obviously something that I need to work on. Right now I will look at my in-laws and see inspiration- of what I could do too if my brain were focused on the task.

On another- and completely unrelated- note: I have finished #2 pair of mittens and are 70% finished my #3 pair. These have been good but the novelty of knitting mittens is wearing off.

Mittens #2 and partially completed #3

Week 4: And here comes Christmas
I suspect that part of this afternoon will be spent putting up the Christmas tree and decorating the house to match the season. And the rest of the week will be spent being startled to find the cat AND the kitten IN the Christmas tree. At eye level. I wonder each year which will be the day I return home at lunch to find the circuits blown, the tree knocked over and one of the cats electricuted and vaguely smoking.

The kids (and in this I totally include Scott) are all so excited. I have been trying to get into the Christmas spirit by listening to Christmas music but so far it hasn't took yet. Maybe I haven't hit that critical mass of Rodger Whitakker Christmas carols yet. I'm working on it. Christmas for my side of the family will be celebrated next weekend at our house. To this I say: Bring it. I'm ready.

Editor Note: Photo added later- Apparently those in a betting frame of mind should put their money on the brown cat as still being the trouble maker this year.

Week 3- I call for a Do-Over

The Mediocre news:

Total Time: 33 min (7 hr 31 min)
Total distance: 11.6 km (161.3 km)
Weight Loss: don't want to talk about it right now




Week 3: Yeah, I blew it
As expected this week was challenging and I totally did not do what I was supposed to do. So I am calling for a do-over, a mulligan, whatever you'd like to call it. I will start over week 3 again today.


So what was I doing with my time instead of training, you ask? Well, these were my distractions/excuses:

1. Black Friday- I went to Bismarck, ND with a pack of wild shoppers for the weekend. This eat up all of Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Although shopping for a 14 hour stretch should be able to count for something (besides an empty wallet). We had a good time.



2. I knit a pair of mittens for Finn to give to the Red Cross for the Warm Hands Campaign within their school. I plan on knitting another 2 pairs before the December 12 deadline for each of the girls to bring too. I think they are cute. But the real problem is that Finn likes them and is mad that I am giving such fine mittens away. So I have promised to each of the kids that I will knit them each a pair to give away and then I will re-knit the same pair of mittens for each of the kids to keep. (That is a lot of mittens.)

3. I was especially lazy.

All of these were pretty lame excuses for reasons why I did nothing. This week I will get back to the program. I have to do better!

Week 2- A lesson learned

The Good News:

Total Time: 3 hours 10 minutes (6hr 58 min)*
Total distance: 69.7 km (149.7 km)*
Weight Loss: -1 lb (+0.4 lb)*
$ spent to date to upgrade my $99 bike: $0 ($189)

*The first value are this week and details in parentheses will show the cumulative for the whole project.

Week 2: A Public Service Announcement and Business Travel

Ahem, right, I will start with the Public Service Announcement:

left hand pedals have a reverse threading and thus have to be removed with a clockwise rotation. (So much for the righty tighty- left loosey rule.)

This was pointed out to me by a reader- who did not provide a name- with great mirth that the two tools installing the pedals had not bothered to research this fact. And you are absolutely right- we didn't. Didn't even occur to us. After I thought about it it totally makes sense that you do not want any possibility of forward rotation of your pedals causing your left pedal to come unscrewed- thus the backwards or left hand thread. Spot welding was not required after all. (Dad, I am talking to you!)

So thank you, nameless reader, for your help. I am learning all kind of things- the least of which is to Youtube things before you try new stuff. For those of you who are interested here is a good how-to video on installing pedals: noredirect=1
Learn from my mistakes!

I travelled for work this week and tried to stay on program in the hotel. I did okay. I have a total of four workouts this week when I was supposed to have six. But from a big picture perspective four workouts in a week- for me- is really good. I still take this as a win.

Eating out while travelling is challenging. I really admire those who have no issue with this. I do well for the first day or day and a half and any time after that I am in a flat spiral back to my horrible eating habits.

At home I am the primary cook for our house. You can see here and here that does not always go well- feeding a family is challenging too. (Understatement.) But at home I am in control. (In theory.) Eating out in Calgary, especially when dining with oil companies, tends to bring you to The All Beef Buffet. Where your lunch choices are girly-portion 10 oz steak, 12 oz steak and 18 oz steak. If you dare order anything but steak you have to deal with the justification of your life choices at the business table and the unintended insult to the quality of Alberta Beef. (Yes, I like it just fine. Honest! I just don't want to need a nap when I will be in two more meetings this afternoon!) Don't even get me started on how I ate there when I was a vegetarian!

Week 3: The High Holiday
This coming week will offer a new set of challenges- not pedals this time- but with my high holiday: Black Friday. My sister, a handful of girlfriends and I are heading to Bismarck, ND for our annual girls trip. We typically get up at redonculous times and shop until we almost literally drop. Now Friday is usually designated as my "cross-training" day (I have been using it as a recovery day to be honest) and I think this week I can legitimately say that I will be cross training. 14 hours of straight shopping- in those crowds- ought to count and maybe earn me a small treat at Cold Stone Creamery or Starbucks or the like. Saturday may be a wash as well. So my goal this week is to work out 5 days and to start and finish my Christmas shopping!

I'll keep you posted!

Week 1- A Good Start and OMG it is like high school all over again!

The Good News:

Total time: 3 hours 48 minutes
Total distance: 80 km
Weight loss: +1.4 lb (WTF!)
$ spent to date to upgrade my $99 bike: $189

Week 1: A Start
Okay- I won't lie: that was hard. But it felt really good to finish the week. I did all 6 days this week and matched the program for the most part. The only part I altered was the cadence (rotations per minute) on the "easy spin" days. I was supposed to be doing 85-92 RPM and I found that I couldn't maintain that for long so I was working at 72-78 RPM. One legged training- well, see below- was... challenging... on many fronts.

This is not an easy program despite being designed for the "beginner and overweight cyclist". This description matches me in both aspects but I think what was really meant was that it was designed for an overweight cyclist not just an overweight person. This, I think, is an important distinction. As a point of reference: at 92-100 RPM I am at literal risk of my pants catching fire and not because I am telling lies.

At the beginning of the week I read over my schedule and paused on what was listed for Saturday: "Warm up 10 min. After WU alternate 20-60 sec with 1 leg off the pedal and up on a chair. Get a total of 5min of 1leg training on each leg. Alternate legs as you feel. Cool down 10 min. 30 min total."

Um, 1 legged pedaling, right. Have you ever pedaled with one leg? I have. A lot. And it sucks. In high school I had my mother's old 10 speed which could be kindly described as a finicky beast. We'll call this one HIgh School Bike (HSB). You didn't dare change gears- even though it was stuck on the hardest one- or even think about pedaling backwards because even a gentle shift or backwards rotation would cause the chain to leap off and tangle in the pedals. I have more than one scar on my knees as a result. And, oh yeah, the left side pedal and/or whole pedal assembly fell off regularly. Usually when I was already late coming home and pedaling like a fiend to not miss curfew. Don't even get me started on the brakes.

My father fixed the pedals by welding the pedal assembly back to the gear bracket... as well as spot welding the pedal in place too. Well everything stayed firmly in place after that but FYI: pedals are MEANT to rotate. HSB was hard enough to ride without having to ride one legged ALL OF THE TIME in a hard gear! Shortly after the repair job HSB was run over by a garbage truck. I choose to think that the universe was trying to help me out.

That was my last bike until I spent $99 to buy this one. My bike is now code named B99.

So anticipating my one legged training this week I endeavoured to buy some pedals with clips and matching shoes. (Real cyclist have those you know.) The universe, again on my side, helped me out by making both items the last ones in stock, on sale and in my size! WOOT WOOT universe! These are certainly not my best looking shoes but they will do.

Pop Quiz: can anyone spot what is wrong with this picture? (Hint: look at the pedals.)

Some technical difficulties ensued in removing the the VERY well oxidized pedals off B99. (Understatement.) With Herculean effort the right one was finally removed but the left is still proving stubborn. And Scott did this trying to force the issue. In our house, it really isn't a proper project unless Scott gets to christen it with his blood. Ouch!

Summary to this point: Universe helping, Scott is bleeding, the right-hand clipped pedal installed, left-hand normal pedal can not be removed. And I still needed to do my 30 minute 1 legged workout. Yeah, you guessed it... it was like high school all over again.

Anyone have a spot welder I can borrow?

Footnotes: (pun intended)

This was too funny to not include. I am confident there is a both a lawyer AND an engineer joke within this picture about how many tools it takes to remove a pedal. But for the sake of my marriage I am going to just leave you with the picture.

How very Helen Bonham Carter of me, non?

Week 2- I needed to think of a way to make this harder (NOT!) so I am heading to Calgary this week for business. Travel, eating out and exercise in a hotel- Oh Dear! This will give B99 a week to think about her behaviour and her reluctance to give up the left pedal. Hopefully I have this figured out before next Saturday's 1 legged training.

I'll keep you posted.

The Challenge Ahead... and Fair Warning

The Challenger: Me!

The Challenge: To complete a 3 month indoor bicycle training program starting Monday, November 7, 2011. I have chosen this program. It will not be easy. My goal is to stick to this program as closely as I am able. This is going to be extra challenging for me to maintain this program through the Christmas and holiday season. I should finish just before Super Bowl.

What I will use to train: This is my $99 Zellers special. Not pretty but she will get me through this.

Why? This is a seasons worth of cheap entertainment, with purpose, and I suspect that my experience here will be rich in material for my blog.

Second reason of why: my parents are buying me snow shoes for Christmas (Shhh! Don't tell me!) and I want to be fit enough to be able to use them without the need of a standby Emergency Medial Technician complete with defibrillator. There's a lofty goal. No cardiac arrest!

Fair Warning to all: I will likely complain- even if I am enjoying myself. I try to be all Miss Mary Sunshine but my inner snark is a monstrous beast that could eat Miss Mary for a snack and still eat a truckers lunch afterwards.

Executive Summary- for those of you pressed for time:

1. I'm going to be spending a lot of quality time with my rusty old bike over the next 3 months.


2. Ultimate goal- no cardiac arrest. Ever.


3. If I happen to lose a few pounds while doing this it won't hurt my feelings.


4. I'll tell you how I am doing. Expect some sass. :)

Wish me luck!