Day 1: Sugar = No. Sinus Cold = Yes.

So today is Ash Wednesday, for those who follow the Western Christian calendar. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Ash Wednesday is the kick off to Lent and it occurs 46 days before Easter. The story goes that Matthew, Mark, Luke and Jesus spent 40 days and 40 nights fasting in the desert while being tempted by Satan (I guess he had nothing better to do). The purpose of Lent has changed over the millennia and basically it boils down to giving up some sort of luxury or benefit in your life as a way of paying penitence for your sins. Now if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that we're missing 6 days in the math. The extra 6 days account for the Sundays between now and Easter and those are kind of like a day off. Fast for 6 days and feast on the 7th. Anyhow, back to my point. Since I am neither overly religious (much more spiritual really) nor do I believe that I commit many sins, I use Lent as a time of motivation. A period to make positive changes in my life and use it as a motivating factor. And with a little hope that God, the Goddess and the Universe all help me out a little and give me some extra strength and will power.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I'm giving up sugar for Lent. To clarify, I'm giving up any foods with "added" sugar in them, as well as high fructose corn syrup and other bad sugars. Anything that has naturally occurring sugars like fruit and milk are ok.

It just so happens that the World Health Organization published an announcement today asking people to consume no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar a day. They go on to say that no more than 10% of your daily calories should come from sugar but would prefer it if people could make that 5% instead.

Sugar is everywhere. It's in things that you'd never think of it being in. One tablespoon of ketchup has almost 1 full teaspoon of sugar in it. Even one serving of the Sour Cream and Onion Crispy Minis that I have has 1 gram of sugar in it. A lot of processed foods have sugar in them. A lot of "diet" or "low fat" foods have added sugar to help with the taste. It's very overwhelming when you stop to think about it.

I'm kicking the habit so I'm going to do what I can to avoid sugar for the next 40 days. I dawned on my today that my dad's 60th birthday falls during this 40 day period so that's going to be a tough one. But my aim isn't to be perfect, just much more aware.

Day 1 went well. Mostly due to the fact that I'm rather sick with a nasty sinus cold right now. I remember to buy sugar free cough/throat drops and I used honey in my tea this morning. Once I'm feeling better, I'm going to have to hit up the grocery store for a new cereal as my favourite one here has added sugar in it. I'm also trying to find some recipes online for no-sugar granola and breakfast bars. I'm sure I'll be a little more motivated when I'm finally feeling better.

My night time cold medication is kicking in so I'd better log off before I fall asleep at my computer and get snot/drool all over the keyboard (that's a pretty image eh?).

Good Night!

Sarah

Guess What? It's Still Cold.

It's been 3 weeks since I last blogged. It's still cold. There's still lots of snow on the ground. The forecast for the week shows more cold and more snow. And the first day of Spring is 18 days away. Someone needs to wake Mother Nature up and remind her of that fact. I'm so done with this weather. I think most people are. According to the weather experts, this is the coldest winter we've had in the last 20 years. I believe it. I'm hanging in there though.

From a mood/mental standpoint, this winter has been pretty good (knock on wood since it isn't over yet). Other than a  couple of days in December and a week in January, I've been doing pretty good. The demons haven't been bugging me. Maybe it's even too cold out for them! The only thing I've done differently this winter than last is Curves. It's become pretty much routine for me now. I haven't missed a session since mid January. I did miss one day in February but that's because they were closed so that wasn't my fault. I think the exercise really has helped. I've been pushing myself to get out more too, be a little more social. That's probably helped too. I'm starting to see the results from Curves. Just small ones. But they make me smile. In numbers, I've lost 6lbs and 10.75 inches. That means I'm trading fat for muscle. I think it's a pretty good swap.

Despite being up late last night, I woke up early-ish this morning and couldn't fall back to sleep. So I hauled my butt out of bed and got moving. I made it to the grocery store and home again by 10:20am. I then had breakfast, watched Police Academy and cleaned my kitchen. Like really cleaned it. I still have the stove/oven and my kitchen table to tackle but the sink and counters are looking pretty good. Took out a whole mess of recycling too. I can't believe how quickly it adds up! I did empty and toss out some expired stuff so that contributed to the recycling mess.

I've decided that I'm going to attempt something this week. It's going to be hard and I'm most likely going to be very cranky but it's worth it. Lent is coming up. And while I'm not Catholic and thus don't normally observes lent, over the last few years I have. For the last 3 years, I've given up chocolate for lent. I've managed to stick to it and then I go hog wild at on Easter. LOL. This year, I'm stepping up my game. I'm going to give up ALL sugar for lent. You see, sugar is my drug. Some people go nuts for chips, for me, it's sugar. Cakes, cookies, squares, chocolate bars, gummies....sugar. And I need to kick that habit. My mid-section needs me to kick that habit. So this should be an adventure. I'm not going to beat myself up if I'm not perfect and I'm sure God won't be disappointed in me either but I'm going to hold myself accountable and give this a real try. I've been told that it take 6 weeks to make or break a habit. Lord knows that my "doing dishes every night" habit attempt failed miserably but my making the bed every morning one worked. I bought a bunch of unsweetened apple sauce fruit snack cups to help with the sugar cravings. I just hope I can do this without killing anyone :)

Bed time has arrived so it's time to sign off. I really hate that the Oscars save all the big, fun awards until the end of the show. I guess no one would watch it to the end otherwise. Oh well.

Good Night!

Sarah

Cold Power Walking and a New Lunch Date

Well I certainly got my cardio in this morning. Thanks to the design of the downtown corridor, an accident in one key spot caused major backups for all the buses.

I was first aware of a problem when it took us 5 minutes to get up a hill. And then when we reached the stop at the top of the hill, we sat there for 5 minutes, without moving away from the stop. Thankfully, I'm a well prepared Canadian girl and was dressed for the weather. I had my boots, two pairs of pants, a sweater, a hoodie, scarf, mittens and my heavy wool coat on so I was good to brave the elements.

Me and about 6 other people hopped off the bus and started the trek into downtown. Looking down the street, there was a long line of pretty red and white buses and a heavy stream of people heading into the core on foot. While making the trek, I passed my boss' boss en route to the office. We said a hurried hi as we each scurried in a different direction across the street.

Despite the fact that it was -28 with the windchill when I left the house, I was quite toasty by the time I got to the office. There was a quick stop at Starbucks involved, where they gave me the wrong drink but it was still good so I was ok. I wasn't the only one who opted to take the two feet and a heartbeat approach to getting to work today. At least it was sunny.

I must say, I'm really looking forward to the new transit tunnel under downtown being built. I think it will really improve traffic in the core.

I had a fun lunch today. Due to scheduling conflicts and over crowding, I opted to have lunch with a couple of our students rather than my usual group. I know one of the girls pretty well as she's been with us for a few years now. They were quite fun to hang with. It was neat talking about school stuff again and I assisted in the one girl trying to plan a romantic weekend away. LOL. They were a nice break in the day. They gave me advice on boys too :)

Kind of like the conversation I had with our boss' assistant over the difference between the photocopier and the printer and the fact that you cannot send a print job to our photocopier. I'm sure it was a fun conversation for anyone who happened to over hear. Our office isn't equipped with over high tech machines. We're kind of an old school place.

All in all, it was a pretty decent day. I think it's time to go and feed my Merlin addiction.

Good Night!

Sarah

Ice Storm, Christmas, New Year's and Merlin.

So it would appear that I haven't written for a while. I haven't written for 2 months and 26 days in fact. I don't know I haven't written. Just didn't feel like it I guess. I formulated a couple blogs in my head but never had the energy or drive to get them out and onto the screen. I guess I needed a break.

I'll bring you up to speed.

I'm still employed. I'm still single. I'm still broke and I'm still going to Curves. So that would be great, not so good, really shitty and fantastic.

Christmas was lovely. Went home for a week and got to spend time with my family. Thankfully, none of us got sick this year which is good, because I still haven't fully forgiven Typhoid Stephen for giving me the stomach flu last Christmas. It's been over a year and I still can't bring myself to eat cranberries.

The day after my arrival at home, mother nature blessed us with an ice storm. Not quite on the same scale at the one that Ottawa received back in 1998, but it was pretty impressive none the less. We were very lucky and only lost power for a very short period of time. 2 minutes the first time and 10 minutes the 2nd time to be precise. The next door neighbour and the one across the street both lost power after a limb from our tree took down the line (that sound you heard was my mother correcting me and saying that it was the city's tree and not ours. Minor detail. It's on our lawn!). Anyhow, the line was live but it was blocking the road so the nice people at the Hydro company came and cut it, thus knocking out power to both houses.

I got to test out my new "winter tracks" when dad suggested that we go for a walk around the neighbourhood and check out the damage. The damn things worked and I stayed vertical while facing a great fear of mine. I'm terrified of ice. We walked in the middle of the road and everyone froze the second we heard a cracking tree branch as a lot of the tree limbs were still falling. But hey, you've got to do something a little stupid every now and then, right? Besides, it was my dad's idea!

Adding to the excitement of the day came in the early afternoon when a tree around the corner caught fire. Ironically, the house where it happened is owned by a Fire Fighter. The cool part was watching the wreath that was hanging on the tree light up and sizzle as the electrical current ran through the tree. It was like a giant, live science demo.

Christmas Eve took on a fun twist when one of my oldest and dearest friends tagged along with us for dinner in order to avoid having to visit her mother-in-law. However, she made the kids go and see her. I'm not sure if that's cruel or just plain old funny. I think I'm going to side with funny on that one. Kind of like our Christmas dinner. We were only expecting my grandfather to come for dinner. But when he arrived, I broke the bad news to my mom as I saw him helping my grandmother from the car (earlier she said that she was too sick to come). Dinner was interesting as, for the first time in my life, we had Ham for Christmas dinner and not turkey. A fact that my mother bitched about, non-stop, for almost a week straight. The kicker? She's the who bought the god damn ham! In the ham's defence, it was delicious and I loved it more than I like turkey so I wasn't upset about the swap at all. Anyhow, back to grandma. She spent most of dinner just pushing food around her plate and saying that she wasn't hungry. Things really got interesting when she asked for some extra strength Tylenol and then her and my grandpa got into a fight over whether or not she'd taken 2 aspirin before leaving the house. My father really didn't say much. Just kept looking at his plate a lot. And my mom drank more sherry with dinner than I've seen her drink in years. It all amused the hell out of me.

Now before you point out what a horrible daughter I am, rest assured that I'm fully aware that karma will be coming back to bite me in the ass over this. One day, hopefully in the really distant future, I'm going to be the one drinking the sherry and staring at my plate while my mom and dad bicker over drugs. Actually, it won't be sherry. It will be Bailey's.

This is a photo of my grandma from earlier in the day...she's hiding from my camera.

Moving on. I headed back to Ottawa just before New Year's Eve. Mostly because I was out of vacation days and had to go back to work. Also because a very good friend of mine was in town and I got invited to his parents' house for a NYE party. This also meant that I *finally* got to meet his awesome wife and see his wonderful little guy, who had the decency to sleep the entire time. I also got to try lobster for the first time and quite enjoyed it. Sadly the night flew by far too quickly but 2014 was ushered in with good cheer and some great people.

Not too much out of the ordinary has happened since then. I do have a bit of a "dating" conundrum going on at the moment but that can wait for another night as this blog is getting quite long. Seriously!? Why can't people just step up and say what they feel? If you're interested, just ask me out. It's not hard. Especially when I've told you that I want to get some face time with you. Clearly that means I'm interested, right?
Sorry, sorry. Just needed to vent a little.

Work is going well and so is Curves. I was there tonight. And now I'm very sore. Especially my back. Hello new muscle groups. Oh, and I've formed a slight addiction to the BBC tv show Merlin. I've been watching it on Netflix. No worries, I just have 1 last episode in season 4 and then all of season 5 to watch and I'm done.  Then I'll have to find a new series to get hooked on. I am behind on my Sherlock and Downton Abbey watching. It would appear that I'm on a British roll.

Anyhow, I have to go and finish doing up the dishes and then I'm going to relax and watch an episode of Merlin.

Hang in there. I might just very well be back.

Good Night!

Sarah

Happy New Year 2014!!!!

Down 2 and Up 10,000

Guess what? At some point in the last week, my lowly little blog cracked 10,000 page views. That's kind of awesome. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I can't believe anyone actually reads my ramblings. I still can't get over how much writing this blog has helped me. It's funny how something so simple can be so effective. I'm truly looking forward to the next 10,000 page views milestone.

Anyhow....It's been a crazy week at the office and it's been a short week too since I had Monday off. For some odd reason, short weeks seem to feel long. I dunno. Maybe it's our desire to get back to the weekend again. I started my new position on Monday. It hasn't been a totally smooth transition as I'm still doing some of the old duties until the new person is fully equipped and up and running. I've been kept rather busy with my new tasks though, so that's good. Keeps me out of trouble that way. My boss reminded me to look into the available training sessions and let him know which ones I'd like to take and if there were any other tools that I feel that I need in order to become an expert with my new position. Sounds like a good idea.

I survived another week of Curves. I even got off my duff and went to the gym on my day odd. Braved the snow/sleet to do so too. I felt pretty great about it when I got home too. As a result of not being at my home club on Monday, we moved my weigh in day to Wednesday. The scale was kind. I lost 2lbs! So I'm down a total of 6.5 in my first 2 weeks. I'm quite happy with those numbers. I just have to keep an eye on the eating plan portion and try not to slide too much. I'm supposed to go out for lunch tomorrow so I'll have to work that into my day. I'm on a quest to find more healthy recipes to try out. Which just gives me a good excuse to kill entire evenings on Pinterest (like I need an excuse). That makes me happy.

While in the grocery store earlier this week, I couldn't help but notice how odd and strange some of the so called "healthy" foods are. I swear to god that I thought they were selling a bag of bird seed in the cereal aisle. I had to actually pick it up and read the label to confirm that it wasn't actually bird seed. It was some sort of muesli or granola. I dunno. It still looked an awful lot like the wild bird seed mix that I get to put on my balcony. It also baffles me as to how expensive 'healthy' food is. For example, 355ml bottles of Pomegranate juice are on 2/$5. Meanwhile, 2L bottles of pop are on 4/$5. Apples are $1.89lb (so maybe 4 apples) where as big bags of photo chips are 2/$3. Sigh. I'm getting low on peanut butter too. I really need that to go on sale soon. The hard part for me is working more vegetables into my meals. I'm kind of a picky eater when it comes to veggies. I only really like a select few: broccoli, cauliflower, raw carrots, mushrooms (cooked), turnip(rutabaga) and brussel sprouts. The turnip that I like is counted as a starch on my meal plan so I can't go hog wild with it. I'm on the fence with cabbage and cucumbers. Some days I like them and some days I don't. I guess the same could be said for celery. I'm not a fan of it cooked though. I'm going to have to get creative.


Maybe while I'm looking for recipes on Pinterest, I'll find some good gift ideas for my parents. I'm struggling to find something to get them and my mother isn't being overly helpful. I ask for a list and my mom gave me 2 items. I told that that didn't count as a list. Sigh. Yes, I know that the spirit and meaning of Christmas isn't about presents and material items. It's just that they give me so much through out the year that I'd like to be able to give them a little something back. To show them how much I love them and appreciate all that they do for me. My Christmas holidays are a month and 6 days away (not that I'm counting).

I need to go and get ready for bed. I work up at 4:21 this morning, got up and went pee, came back to bed and then couldn't sleep. I think I drifted off for about 15 minutes between then and when the alarm went off at 6. It was brutal. I'm hoping that a repeat doesn't occur this evening.

Good Night!

Sarah

Smiling on a sunny day!

Good People Still Exist

So my biggest success of the day was finally clearing level 105 in Candy Crush. LOL. I've been stuck on it for several weeks now.

Work was good. It's been very steady but not quite into the "crazy" side. Which is nice. I have to do a bunch of house keeping tomorrow. I need to file some stuff and move the things I need to my new desk. That will be a fun exercise. And I start the day off tomorrow with a doctor's appointment.

Sigh. My doctor. I really need to find a new one. But it was so freakin' hard to get the one I've got. It's just that the office is bad. The receptionist is incompetent and I can't believe she's still working there. And my doctor has the worst hours! Thankfully I don't have to see him often (knock on wood that it stays that way).

I saw a couple acts of kindness today which made me smile. A very elderly woman who I suspect has Parkinson was trying to get some chicken from a lunch buffet near my office today. She was rather short too and there was no way she was going to be able to reach the containers. Before I could walk across the place to help her, another woman came along and got her a container. The elderly women then proceeded to fill it herself...and man, did she take a lot of chicken. She then tried to close the container, but couldn't, so yet another kind soul came to her rescue. The last I saw, the elderly lady was pushing her container of chicken around on her walker, looking rather happy. It was great. It made me smile. And it made me a little sad. It made my miss my Gram. And made me worry that one day that would be me. Growing old alone.  But mostly I was happy to see that kindness still exists and for the most part, we're decent, kind and caring human beings.

After escaping the office this evening, I bought some groceries, came home and had a very simple but quite yummy dinner. And then watched a funny new episode of The Big Bang Theory. I love that show. So awesome :)

The only upside to having a doctor's appointment tomorrow is that I get to sleep in for a bit. That will be nice.

My abs are doing surprisingly well today. They don't hurt unless I really engage them. It's actually the backs of my shoulders that are sore today. And my foot. Maybe I'll mention that one to my doctor in the morning.

Good Night!

Sarah

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch....

I. AM. IN. PAIN. Seriously. Everything hurts. Even sitting upright hurts because you engage your abs to do so and those fuckers hurt the most. Standing waiting for the bus hurt. Walking from my bus stop to my house hurt. I don't think we ever fully appreciate how we use our muscles until we've done something to make them hurt. It was a hard workout today so that's why I'm in pain tonight.

My first weigh in was on Monday. It went well. I'm down 4.25lbs. Thank god. It was a rough week. Trying to completely overhaul your way of life is exhausting. And expensive. Healthy food really does seem to cost more and I need to buy new runners soon. Sigh. It's all worth it though, right?

Things at work have been going well. It's been busy but not crazy. I've been given a new set of responsibilities thanks to even more changes at the office but I'm cautiously optimistic about them. Change is a fact of life. I need to make peace with that sooner or later. And sooner is most likely the best option. I'm also working with one of our newer employees on planning our office holiday party. It's been fun and is a nice distraction from the regular routine of the office.

I'm back to the gym on Friday and I can't say I'm looking forward to it. LOL. Hopefully some of the sore muscles calm down a bit before then. Especially since I'm meeting up with someone for coffee after the gym on Friday. I need to be in one piece and functioning! Keep your fingers crossed.

Ok, I'm limping away from the computer now. I can hear my bed calling me from the other room. Sometimes I wish I could stay there all day. But I guess that's what the weekend's for!!

Good Night!

Sarah

I bet a few of those would make the pain go away....LOL!