Finally made it to the gym Wed night after a 2-month-long vacay...from the gym :)
I did free weights for 30min then treadmill for 20min. I felt great when I was done. All energized and healthy - I know I've only gone one day this week but it's a start. I'd have gone tonight as well but it that time of the month and my cramps though manageable with Midol are still present. Also have some muscle aches from my workout Wed but no more than I expected after my long absence. I had my yearly physical/gyno appt this week as well. That was as much fun as you can imagine (grimace). I haven't gained any net-weight since last year (since I lost the extra lbs I gained over Christmas by March). I'm lucky in a way that my job entails me being on my feet and walking around, up and down stairs several times a day.

I've also decided to make an effort to get at least 5 fruit and/or veggies a day. My current diet was sorely lacking in these areas. I might have been getting 2 serving of them at most a day if that.
I cooked a huge pot of lamb stew Mon night into which I put potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, coriander, bay leaves. I also cooked acorn squash separately and chucked it in at the end. it came out really great. I even skimmed off the top layer of fat the next day and then froze it in portions. Normally when I make lamb stew I don't skim it off, I just portion it out incl. all the yummy congealed fat which turns into deliciousness when reheated :)
I also bought several packs of frozen veggies for stir-frying and also bought this nifty spicy stir-fry sauce. Well they weren't kidding about it being hot. I don't like to use the stir-fry sauce that comes with the frozen stir-fry veg b/c it's usu just high fructose corn syrup, coloring and other artificial nonsense which always seems to have very little flavor and too much salt. I have to add additional noodles (Ramen ones) to it to make it edible. I like Ramen noodles but don't use the packets of "salt" that come with them. After the whole too-spicy dish, I also got some of this regular stir-fry sauce. Maybe a mix of the two will give me just the right mix of spiciness and flavor that I seek :)

Went out Thurs night for drinks with a friend from work. It was fun, we hung out with her roomies' bf and his friends. It was a local bar known for it variety of beers on tap. It was standing room only, literally wall-to-wall people. We stayed out till 11:30 or so. I was so exhausted when I woke up this morning, I felt like crap and I thought I'm too old for this shit. I only had one beer. Maybe I should have left at 10. I didn't get there till 8:30 but still 1 1/2 hrs is more than enough time to socialize. Plus most people there have probably not already worked 40hrs by Thurs night like I(and my friend) have so being out late is not a problem. It was fun though.

This morning, it was a little rough going. I didn't accomplish much today at all. Our group went out to lunch at PF Chang's. It was delicious. Plus we left at 11:50 and didn't get back until 2:30m. Takes a while for 11 people to have appetizers and entrees :) Took care of a big chunk of the day and the rest of it went by in a blur.
I'm tired. I think I'm going to bed now.

Dinner & movie

I'm really due for a break, for things to start going well. I feel more positive now than I did at the start of this week. That's a good sign.
Went to dinner / movie last night with my usual group. This helped improve my outlook.

For dinner, I picked a grilled Ahi tuna sandwich with fries. It was delicious and it only cost $17 incl tip for my share. I had hot tea, no alcohol (this always ramps up the bill). The tuna was a little rarer than I would normally have it if I cooked it myself but was still good. The fries were thick-cut, crispy on the outside and fully cooked on the inside. Perfect. I also had tastes of everyone else's entres. All really good food at reasonable prices.

I hate it when we go out to eat and I realize I've spent $30 or more on mediocre food. So I went in tonight thinking about the cost and ordering to suit. The restaurant was empty except for us and 2 other tables. The food was so good, I don't know why it wasn't packed with patrons. The bread they brought out before out dinner was warmed in the oven first. Warmed bread is rarely done these days and always a real treat for me. Maybe it was the time - we got there after our movie around 9:30pm. They had live jazz which at first weirded me out. I got there first and a couple amateurs were "singing karaoke-style" I use this term very generously. By the time the others got there, they'd stopped thank God. The band was a little too loud. I prefer it to be background rather than so loud it feels like a concert.

We saw Zodiac which for some reason I've been calling 'vertigo' all week. Some kind of brain glitch...with the week I've had I guess it's excusable. It was a bit gory in parts but interesting all the way through. Wasn't bored and I think the ending was done well.

salsa, the perfect snack

Salsa is the perfect snack. It goes well with so many different chips and fruit. I've been adding fruit to my fav brand of salsa and I haven't been sorry yet. It makes it even more delicious. Tonight I had avocado salsa. This salsa is chunky and tastes really fresh - it has to be refrigerated - it calls itself "premium fresh salsa" and that is no lie. I always get the 'medium'. Mild is too bland and Hot is a bit much for me. Medium's got just enough of a kick. I've added mango - both ripe and half-ripe - both really good. Papaya's my favorite but it has to be almost ripe (fun fact, trinis say pah-paw not papaya :). I don't care for half-ripe/green papaya though I do enjoy green/half-ripe mango.

chocolate

Right now, I could really go for a ritter sport. It's dark chocolate with whole hazelnuts...German chocolate...yum-my! It's my favorite of the moment. It's 210 calories per serving and it contains 4 servings. I'm usu able to control my self and stick to 1 but no more than 1 1/2 servings at a time. Well after I read what the serving size was/amt of calories :)
For you chocolate lovers out there looking for something new - check out the Ritter Sport site.

No chocolate for me for a while. Or nuts for that matter. Both tend to aggravate my asthma especially when it's out of control. Saw my doc yesterday and she incr my dosage of flovent(my controller medication that I take twice/day to keep my asthma in check). So I'm going to see if that helps knock out whatever it is that's caused me to wheeze/need my emergency inhaler(albuterol) almost every day for the past 12 days. Sadly, no antibiotics as I'd hoped. I can understand why...I've not been bringing up anything and when my nose runs, it's clear...no antibiotics for me :(. I always feel like they would be great to get but my docs are never free with prescribing them to me. Maybe I feel that way b/c the few times I've taken them, I went from feeling like crap to feeling great within a couple days. She thinks it's fine for me to go workout as long as I take my albuterol before. I haven't felt like going to the gym at all. That's not a new feeling, I feel like that all the time but have still managed to go anyway. No more excuses though. Definitely hitting the gym tomorrow. Don't know if I'm up for boxing class though but I might as well get back into the swing of things. My muscles have lost most of the definition they had before my holiday in Dec. I want that back.

Have my 6mth dental cleaning tomorrow. Lately my teeth have been really sensitive. At first it was just the 2 adjoining teeth that my dentist filled about 6mths ago. They never really lost their sensitivity. this is why I can't enjoy many things I used to like to munch on - no hard pretzels, tostitos are almost bearable if I eat only on one side, potato chips. Tonight was really bad, they were really achy all through my dinner - I call it the anti-gym dinner i.e. Popeye's spicy chicken with Cajun fries. Don't even want to think about the calories there. I barely enjoyed it, my teeth were weirded out the whole time, no matter what side I tried to chew on. I've tried sensitive toothpaste and it seemed to help for a while but tonight's the worst it's been-almost too sensitive for me to brush...the horror! I hope the dentist has something useful to give me to fix this.

mallomars

They're baaacckk :)