Warming the house

I've been slacker-iffic with this blog again for the past week or so. Time for another of my infamous catch-up posts:

1. Work is insanely busy.
2. The circuit board on our furnace fried a few days ago. We only had to go one night without heat before Marc located a local place with a replacement, and he fixed it himself.
3. Work is crazy busy.
   
4. Along with slacking on my blog, I've also been slacking on Jillian's workouts. I'll get back into it.
5. Work is really busy.

Hmmmm. Notice any trends there? Coincidentally, I think I set a new record for earliest bedtime not related to being sick on Thursday night when I was in bed and asleep around 8:30. I was exhausted.

Yesterday I went to Laura's baby shower, which was good fun. Then last night we went over to Andrea's and Steve's for dinner, Wii, and karaoke. Today we finally saw Gran Torino--great movie. I think it would have been even better if we hadn't had to sit in the third row. It was packed! Tonight was the perfect end of the weekend: pepperoni pizza for dinner. Yum!

Pure evil

So I had a long, tiring day at work today, and I had to stay a little late to finish some things up. When I got home, Marc and I turned right around and went to the grocery store for some dinner stuff for later this week and so I could get the stuff to make the highly addictive peanut butter fudge krispy treats for a dessert contest at work tomorrow. You may know how much I generally despise going to the store. Then we get home, get everything put away, and I start making my dessert. After asking if there was anything he could do to help and having me decline, Marc decides to play MarioKart. MarioKart! So unfair. I'm slaving away in the kitchen and he plays my favorite game of the moment that I haven't been able to play in a couple days. I guess it would have been worse if I'd been making dinner for us instead of junk for work. As a consolation, I did get to play a few rounds of MK after I was done. But still.

Workout substitute? Not so much...

When I came home from work today, instead of working out, I played MarioKart. Though it kinda got my heartrate up, I'm pretty sure that it wasn't an acceptable sustitute for a true workout.

Well, the streak had to end sometime

So much for blogging every day. Ha!

Thursday was another Wii-free day for me since we spent a couple hours after work at the food bank and I was just too tired after that to play anything.

Last night we did happy hour at Oak Hills with Greg, Kristin, and Rey, and we ran into Tommy, Lindsey, Aaron, and all their kids. Marc also ran into a couple old friends of his. Then we went to Worst Buy to pick up Mario Kart (and Greg got about 2 dozen movies) and ran into an old coworker of Marc's. It was one of those weird nights where every time we turned around, we saw someone else we knew. We came home and played Mario Kart until my thumb was sore, then we crashed early.

Jillian returned this morning after a two-day hiatus. It's amazing how the workout is so much more bearable now--just a week since I started. We'll probably move up to the Shred2 workout sometime this week.

Now that it's almost 1:00, I guess it's time to take a shower and get ready for the day.

Excitement

Our Wii and Wii Fit were supposed to arrive tomorrow. Things didn't go according to schedule though--instead Wii came early! Woot! Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to do anything with it because we worked out with Jillian when I got home from work, and then I took a shower and left to get my hair colored. Now I'm just plain exhausted, and I'm glad there's nothing new on TV tonight so I can go to bed early. I'm sure there will plenty of Wii fun in our future for this weekend though. :)

Wii is coming

Our Wii is due to arrive on Thursday. Unfortunately, Thursday is also our monthly day for volunteer work at the food bank after work, so we'll lose a couple precious hours of play time. Somehow we'll survive.

And yes, in case you're keeping track, we did Jillian's workout again today. I'm not nearly as sore now, so it wasn't nearly so bad.

Keeping it up

I really didn't want to. Really. But we did Jillian's workout again today after work. During the warm-up jumping jacks, I started wimpering and crying so much that Marc had to pause the workout so we could both finish laughing at my patheticness. (Yes, I'm making up words.) I really hope that I don't hurt as bad tomorrow as I do today.

Hey, this is my fifth day in a row that I've posted something! That's gotta be some kind of record!

Caving in to further pain

I insisted earlier today that I was way too sore to do the Jillian "Fitness Guru from Hell" workout, but then I decided to suck it up. It's only twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of the worst pain I've felt in recent memory. But we did it, and we have plans to do it again tomorrow after work (after a brief discussion about getting up at 5:00 a.m. and doing it before work). I'm currently attempting to limit my travel on stairs. Going up isn't so bad. Going down is another story. My thighs better get used to this soon...

In other news, it's snowing again. There's a good 2 inches in our backyard, but I don't think there's going to be much more. It's supposed to be in the mid-40s and rainy tomorrow, so this snow isn't going to stick around for long.

Butt-kicking

We rediscovered the on-demand fitness programs available on our cable box the other day. Marc tried out one by Jillian Michaels (of Biggest Loser) yesterday, and then we both did it today.

Every muscle in my body felt like jelly when I was done.

In our new (fruitless) quest to find a Wii, we swung by Best Buy and picked up a couple of Jillian's DVDs so that we could follow the whole program even after it expires on the TV. I guess doing these intense 20 minute strength/carido combo workouts is better than running at least twice as long. But holy cow, it sucks for those 20 minutes.

So with the Wii, instead of calling and driving all over town just to find the console--much less a Wii Fit--I think we're just going to get the whole set on Ebay for a few bucks more.

Now let's see how long this fitness kick lasts...

Long day

We had an interesting day at work today. Fortunately I found out about an issue last night, so I was prepared to go in earlier today. Unfortunately, that meant I was awake a little before 5:00 a.m. this morning. To make my especially early morning even crappier, I walked outside to find my car covered in a light blanket of snow. More snow? Sheesh. I didn't even know it was in the forecast. We might even get a little more tomorrow.

I came home from work and took a nap, then we headed out for dinner with Chris and Slimey at Rock Creek. After dinner, I lost the battle to play games, but a good consolation prize was getting to watch The Prestige. Holy cow! I hadn't heard anything about this movie, but I really enjoyed it! It was one of those that we sat around for a bit after it was over, debating different parts of it. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it.

Now I'm off to bed... zzzzzzzzzzzz...

Happy New Year!

My first resolution: to get back into blogging more frequently.

We had one heck of a snowstorm here in Portland the week before Christmas, with the aftermath lasting through the weekend after Christmas. It was quite unusual. First it was ice, then snow, then some freezing rain and more snow for good measure. My office closed early a couple of the days and didn't open at all one day. Marc got to be my taxi driver on the days I did work so that he could have the Xterra during the day. My poor Civic sat on the street covered in snow for a couple weeks before I was able to drive it again (finally) this week. It only took a day to wash all the pretty snow away after it started raining, so now we're back to more traditional winter weather.

We were cat sitting for Pete and Courtney's cats while they visited Colorado for the holiday (once their flight was finally able to get out of town), and that put us really close to Grandpa's old house. We stopped by to see what progress the Park people have made--and it was weird. The garage, house, and driveway are all gone, along with some of the trees and a lot of the shrubbery from the back of the house. It made it hard to judge where things used to be. And it was sad.

It was also sad to hear from my mom that my grandma (her mom) died on the 28th. It's when things like that happen that it really sucks being so far away. Goodbye, grandma. I love you, and I'll still think about you often.

We went over to Jocelyn and Neil's house for NYE last night. We had a good time playing Guitar Hero and discovering our "Wii age" on the Wii Fit. And the food! There was soooo much food. I left feeling like an overstuffed whale.

Speaking of food, Marc has quite the hobby going right now. He's turned into a baker! From pumpkin bread pudding to apple cranberry cake to pumpkin butterscotch cookies to turkey meatloaf with bacon and cheese to lemon olive oil cookies to apple crisp... every day it seems like I come home to a different treat! We owe a lot of this to Joy the Baker's web site, which also aided me in making peanut butter fudge krispy treats (YUM!!) and pumpkin pie bars. I think it's so inspiring as a site because the pictures make all her food look so incredible. So, yeah, we've been eating well lately. Now I need to start thinking about getting back into a running routine. Blah.

Happy New Year to you! May the coming year bring you happiness, laughter, and plenty of good memories.