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Saturday, June 25, 2016
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Been a long time...
Wow - it has been a really long time since I've updated my blog! Time just zooms right by doesn't it? So what has been going on here at da casa in all this time? I'm still doing my wii fit everyday. Haven't missed a single day in the last 6 weeks. It would be longer than that but I logged in late one night and found out I had forgotten to change the time on the wii so it thought that day was already over.
Anyhow - I'm only down about 8 pounds since the start of the year but I'm in much better shape. My resting heart rate has dropped from 88-92 down to 69-74. My recovery heart rate drops 30 beats in just under a minute. I've lost a full inch off my waist and hips. Needless to say I'm pretty happy with my results so far. In fact so much so that I'm signed up to do a mini triathlon on May 30th. I'm very excited because I've always wanted to do one and never have. It's short - a 300 meter swim, 9 miles on the bike and 2 mile run. Still I'm really looking forward to it. I'm starting to stress a little because it is just over 8 weeks away and I have a long ways to go to get ready for it. I did run a mile yesterday and 3/4 mile the day before. I've been doing a half hour or so either on a stationary bike or on my regular bike on a trainer. I'm going to have to start pushing more though if I'm going to be ready in time.
Anyhow - I'm only down about 8 pounds since the start of the year but I'm in much better shape. My resting heart rate has dropped from 88-92 down to 69-74. My recovery heart rate drops 30 beats in just under a minute. I've lost a full inch off my waist and hips. Needless to say I'm pretty happy with my results so far. In fact so much so that I'm signed up to do a mini triathlon on May 30th. I'm very excited because I've always wanted to do one and never have. It's short - a 300 meter swim, 9 miles on the bike and 2 mile run. Still I'm really looking forward to it. I'm starting to stress a little because it is just over 8 weeks away and I have a long ways to go to get ready for it. I did run a mile yesterday and 3/4 mile the day before. I've been doing a half hour or so either on a stationary bike or on my regular bike on a trainer. I'm going to have to start pushing more though if I'm going to be ready in time.
Monday, January 19, 2009
getting shorted on a purchase....
I'm a little annoyed at the moment. I've been working on cleaning up my basement and putting things where they belong instead of where they get piled. I bought a box of those space bags - has one jumbo cube, one extra large and one large bag. This should be enough to store my extra linens and comforters I don't use but are still perfectly good. I take my box down to the basement to try out the ultra wonderful space bags... right... okay - first problem, there is only the jumbo cube in the box - the other two bags aren't there. Grrr - this is a constant problem at the stores by my house. People steal from boxes and leave enough to make it look right when you peek in to make sure the stuff is there. Somehow or another, my hand goes right to the package that doesn't have what it is supposed to in it. If it isn't that, it's grabbing one that is damaged in a way that I don't see until I get it home. Then, how can you really take it back? Who is to say I didn't use two of the bags out of the box and then take it back and say I got shorted? I mean besides the fact that I wouldn't do that, but they don't know me and can't know I wouldn't do something like that. Plus I'd feel guilty even though I didn't do anything because they'd be looking at me and thinking right - this is a scam.
I think part of my problem is I hate shopping. I want to get what I need and go. The store is always crowded, you can hardly ever get to what you need to without having to wait for other people to spend 5 minutes trying to make a decision, and the checkout lines are crazy long. I think I really need to start driving to stores outside my neighborhood - maybe that would help. I used to live right by a grocery store that primarily served a pretty upscale area and the shopping experience was completely different. The biggest difference I noticed was no matter what the hour there was always way more lanes open than you'd expect given the number of customers in the store. In the year I shopped there, I don't think I ever had to wait in line behind more than one person. Maybe because of that fact - people seemed much nicer there. The employees weren't all rushed and frazzled, and so everyone was calm and polite.
I do make an effort to try and go to the store at really odd hours in the hopes that it won't be so crowded, but the downside to that is that you can end up in a really super long checkout line. And the 24 hour stores are further away for me to drive to. Hmmm... so is it really worth the extra time and money to drive further to have a better shopping experience? I'm starting to think it is at least worth trying. I'd really like to be able to come home from the store and actually have all the things I bought and have them all be in good working order.
So it looks like my space bag experience will have to wait - the one bag I did actually have in the box, tore when I went to close it. Guess I tried to put too much stuff in there. Grrr... just not a good thing all the way around. Heh, maybe I'm just not supposed to get organized!
I think part of my problem is I hate shopping. I want to get what I need and go. The store is always crowded, you can hardly ever get to what you need to without having to wait for other people to spend 5 minutes trying to make a decision, and the checkout lines are crazy long. I think I really need to start driving to stores outside my neighborhood - maybe that would help. I used to live right by a grocery store that primarily served a pretty upscale area and the shopping experience was completely different. The biggest difference I noticed was no matter what the hour there was always way more lanes open than you'd expect given the number of customers in the store. In the year I shopped there, I don't think I ever had to wait in line behind more than one person. Maybe because of that fact - people seemed much nicer there. The employees weren't all rushed and frazzled, and so everyone was calm and polite.
I do make an effort to try and go to the store at really odd hours in the hopes that it won't be so crowded, but the downside to that is that you can end up in a really super long checkout line. And the 24 hour stores are further away for me to drive to. Hmmm... so is it really worth the extra time and money to drive further to have a better shopping experience? I'm starting to think it is at least worth trying. I'd really like to be able to come home from the store and actually have all the things I bought and have them all be in good working order.
So it looks like my space bag experience will have to wait - the one bag I did actually have in the box, tore when I went to close it. Guess I tried to put too much stuff in there. Grrr... just not a good thing all the way around. Heh, maybe I'm just not supposed to get organized!
Easy & affordable homemade hard cider
Homemade hard cider on the cheap!
Making your own hard cider is fun and so easy you really won't believe it. You can use a traditional brewers kit with buckets and airlocks and all that - or you can make do with stuff you probably have on hand already. I recommend trying it the cheap way first - make a gallon and see if you like it. Later on you can always buy the buckets and ramp up your production if you like. This recipe is for one gallon and you can adjust it accordingly with one slight change - one packet of yeast will do up to 5 gallons.
Equipment you need:
2 clean 2 liter soda bottles with lids
2 Regular balloons
Juice pitcher that will hold 2 liters
Large pot & something to stir with
funnel
safety pin
Ingredients you need:
1 pound Sugar - brown or white - I usually use both together
1 packet yeast - can be dry yeast or champagne yeast. Champagne yeast gives a better flavor to finished product but it's easy enough to fix it up if you just use regular yeast. Dry Yeast is in your baking isle at the grocery store and is sold in three pack strips for about $1.19. Champagne yeast runs about 50 cents a pack and is sold individually at home brew stores.
3 cans frozen juice concentrate - Very Important - It must NOT contain any preservatives! No Potassium sorbate, no sodium citrate or any other odd unknown ingredient. It can have asorbic acid which is just vitamin C. Other than that it can't have any chemical sounding indgredients. You really want it to be just juice from concentrate. Generally speaking that means no Welch's brand because it has sodium citrate in it. Old Orchard is fine and so is Langers. It seems most store brand are fine also but be sure and read the label. You can also use regular juice rather than frozen but you'll need to buy a whole gallon and same rule applies as far as not having any kind of preservatives. Generally it is cheaper and easier to just work with the frozen - especially on your first try. And yes - the juice can be any flavor you want although most people start with apple. After you get the hang of it you can even combine different flavors - whatever you want to do.
The main principle of making homemade alcohol is that yeast turns sugar into alcohol. You can basically say that yeast eats sugar and craps alcohol - and that is a beautiful thing! With about a pound of sugar to each gallon I get about 9% alcohol content. More sugar and yeast equals more alcohol content. Trust me though - 9% is a pretty high level. Store bought hard cider is usually 5%. Also be aware that the sugar you put in to start will be gone by the end - if you want to make your cider sweeter it won't do any good to add more sugar at the start! I'll tell you later how to sweeten your finished product.
So are you ready? Open your cans and dump the contents into your pot (on a medium low setting) - don't add the recommended amount of water to it. Add your sugar and stir until until it dissolves. If you want to kill any wild yeast that might be in the juice already - let it warm to about 140 degrees for a half hour to 45 minutes. The deal with wild yeast is that you have no idea if it is there or isn't and if it will make your finished product better, worse or no effect. Some people skip this step and just warm it enough to dissolve the sugar. No matter what you choose - don't let it boil or you'll end up with a cloudy or hazy finished product.
Once your juice is ready, use the funnel and split it between the two 2 liter bottles as evenly you can. Now you can add the water as recommended on the concentrated juice label. If you can't add as much water as they recommend - don't worry, it will just make the flavor a little bolder. Put the lids on the bottles and let it sit until it gets to room temperature. I generally just start mine in the evening and let it sit overnight so I'm not so tempted to toss the yeast in early.
Rinse out your balloons to get the powder out of them. While they have water in them, use a safety pin to poke 5 or 6 holes in the balloon then dump the water out. This is how the carbon dioxide created by the fermentation process is going to get out of the bottle without letting anything else back in. If you have a hydrometer and want to measure your alcohol content, now is the time to take the initial reading before the yeast goes in. Now put your yeast in splitting it between the two 2 liter bottles. Don't stress over this part - the single packet of yeast is enough to make 5 gallons of cider with so guestimating is plenty good enough. Stretch the balloon over the opening of the bottles and put the lids away somewhere that you can find them in a few weeks. Put the bottles somewhere they won't need to be moved and is dark and cool - between 60 and 70 degrees is best. In a day or two the balloon will inflate - generally to about the size of a golf ball or maybe a cue ball. This means the fermentation process is working fine. It won't blow up any bigger because the pin holes are letting the carbon dioxide out.
Your done with the major part, now the rest is super easy and requires no precision at all. Let it sit about 10 days to two weeks without messing with it at all. Then, very gently remove the balloon and pour the cider into a pitcher or some other container - try very hard not to disturb the sediment at the bottom of the two liter bottle while your doing this. After the cider is in the pitcher, rinse out the two liter bottle to get rid of all the sediment and then pour the cider back in, put the balloon back on and put it back where it was. You can actually skip this step entirely and it will still work but your finished product will have a much stronger yeast taste to it.
Let it sit another 10 days to two weeks. It really only takes three weeks start to finish but I've had better taste results when I give it 4 weeks total. Gently pour into your pitcher and rinse out the two liter. Now you have a choice to make - do you want to wait three more weeks and make a carbonated hard cider or just drink it now? Personally - I'm not patient enough to let it carbonate so I'd just put it back in the 2 liter bottle and put the cap on it (you did save the cap didn't you?). If you have a hydrometer and want to know your alcohol content - now is the time to take your second measurement and figure out how much alcohol is in there (there should be a chart and directions that came with the hydrometer). If you want to carbonate your cider, heat up a small amount of water and dissolve 3-4 tablespoons of sugar in it. Pour it into your 2 liter bottle, pour the cider back in, cap it and wait another three weeks and it will carbonate.
If your flavor isn't bold enough or sweet enough, get another can of frozen concentrate and add the pure juice to your 2 liter bottles with no extra water. You can also add more sugar now if you want but be aware that if you do add sugar and leave the cap on without releasing the pressure periodically - you'll end up with a carbonated drink. Actually, it will carbonate on it's own eventually but I think it takes a few months to do it on it's own.
Hard Cider doesn't last long around my house because I have several friends that really love it too. However, I've read that it ages just like wine and gets better and better as it ages. I hear that it is amazing after about 9 months but I've yet to be able to keep it around long enough to find out - in spite of the fact that I mostly make mine in 5 gallon batches! Another thing to be aware of is that when your first able to drink it, your cider will be cloudy. If your wanting it to look nice and clear, it will need to sit about another 2-3 weeks after the second time you get rid of the sediment. If it still has a lot of sediment, you might have to repeat the step with the pitcher again.
If you like it and want to make larger amounts, you can get a basic bewers kit with 6.5 gallon buckets. You'll also need to consider how you want to store it, bottles? Kegs? Something else? Also you need to be aware that if you do bottle it, your cider needs to have a specific gravity of less than one or you risk having bottles explode from pressure. There is a way around this though - if you heat your cider up again to 140 for 45 minutes, that will kill any active yeast that is left so you won't have any more fermentation going on and hence - no pressure build up. Be sure to let it cool down again before bottling. I personally haven't done this so I'm just telling what I've read. If your wanting to get serious I recommend doing more research and see what more experienced people than me have to say about it.
Have fun & enjoy!
Making your own hard cider is fun and so easy you really won't believe it. You can use a traditional brewers kit with buckets and airlocks and all that - or you can make do with stuff you probably have on hand already. I recommend trying it the cheap way first - make a gallon and see if you like it. Later on you can always buy the buckets and ramp up your production if you like. This recipe is for one gallon and you can adjust it accordingly with one slight change - one packet of yeast will do up to 5 gallons.
Equipment you need:
2 clean 2 liter soda bottles with lids
2 Regular balloons
Juice pitcher that will hold 2 liters
Large pot & something to stir with
funnel
safety pin
Ingredients you need:
1 pound Sugar - brown or white - I usually use both together
1 packet yeast - can be dry yeast or champagne yeast. Champagne yeast gives a better flavor to finished product but it's easy enough to fix it up if you just use regular yeast. Dry Yeast is in your baking isle at the grocery store and is sold in three pack strips for about $1.19. Champagne yeast runs about 50 cents a pack and is sold individually at home brew stores.
3 cans frozen juice concentrate - Very Important - It must NOT contain any preservatives! No Potassium sorbate, no sodium citrate or any other odd unknown ingredient. It can have asorbic acid which is just vitamin C. Other than that it can't have any chemical sounding indgredients. You really want it to be just juice from concentrate. Generally speaking that means no Welch's brand because it has sodium citrate in it. Old Orchard is fine and so is Langers. It seems most store brand are fine also but be sure and read the label. You can also use regular juice rather than frozen but you'll need to buy a whole gallon and same rule applies as far as not having any kind of preservatives. Generally it is cheaper and easier to just work with the frozen - especially on your first try. And yes - the juice can be any flavor you want although most people start with apple. After you get the hang of it you can even combine different flavors - whatever you want to do.
The main principle of making homemade alcohol is that yeast turns sugar into alcohol. You can basically say that yeast eats sugar and craps alcohol - and that is a beautiful thing! With about a pound of sugar to each gallon I get about 9% alcohol content. More sugar and yeast equals more alcohol content. Trust me though - 9% is a pretty high level. Store bought hard cider is usually 5%. Also be aware that the sugar you put in to start will be gone by the end - if you want to make your cider sweeter it won't do any good to add more sugar at the start! I'll tell you later how to sweeten your finished product.
So are you ready? Open your cans and dump the contents into your pot (on a medium low setting) - don't add the recommended amount of water to it. Add your sugar and stir until until it dissolves. If you want to kill any wild yeast that might be in the juice already - let it warm to about 140 degrees for a half hour to 45 minutes. The deal with wild yeast is that you have no idea if it is there or isn't and if it will make your finished product better, worse or no effect. Some people skip this step and just warm it enough to dissolve the sugar. No matter what you choose - don't let it boil or you'll end up with a cloudy or hazy finished product.
Once your juice is ready, use the funnel and split it between the two 2 liter bottles as evenly you can. Now you can add the water as recommended on the concentrated juice label. If you can't add as much water as they recommend - don't worry, it will just make the flavor a little bolder. Put the lids on the bottles and let it sit until it gets to room temperature. I generally just start mine in the evening and let it sit overnight so I'm not so tempted to toss the yeast in early.
Rinse out your balloons to get the powder out of them. While they have water in them, use a safety pin to poke 5 or 6 holes in the balloon then dump the water out. This is how the carbon dioxide created by the fermentation process is going to get out of the bottle without letting anything else back in. If you have a hydrometer and want to measure your alcohol content, now is the time to take the initial reading before the yeast goes in. Now put your yeast in splitting it between the two 2 liter bottles. Don't stress over this part - the single packet of yeast is enough to make 5 gallons of cider with so guestimating is plenty good enough. Stretch the balloon over the opening of the bottles and put the lids away somewhere that you can find them in a few weeks. Put the bottles somewhere they won't need to be moved and is dark and cool - between 60 and 70 degrees is best. In a day or two the balloon will inflate - generally to about the size of a golf ball or maybe a cue ball. This means the fermentation process is working fine. It won't blow up any bigger because the pin holes are letting the carbon dioxide out.
Your done with the major part, now the rest is super easy and requires no precision at all. Let it sit about 10 days to two weeks without messing with it at all. Then, very gently remove the balloon and pour the cider into a pitcher or some other container - try very hard not to disturb the sediment at the bottom of the two liter bottle while your doing this. After the cider is in the pitcher, rinse out the two liter bottle to get rid of all the sediment and then pour the cider back in, put the balloon back on and put it back where it was. You can actually skip this step entirely and it will still work but your finished product will have a much stronger yeast taste to it.
Let it sit another 10 days to two weeks. It really only takes three weeks start to finish but I've had better taste results when I give it 4 weeks total. Gently pour into your pitcher and rinse out the two liter. Now you have a choice to make - do you want to wait three more weeks and make a carbonated hard cider or just drink it now? Personally - I'm not patient enough to let it carbonate so I'd just put it back in the 2 liter bottle and put the cap on it (you did save the cap didn't you?). If you have a hydrometer and want to know your alcohol content - now is the time to take your second measurement and figure out how much alcohol is in there (there should be a chart and directions that came with the hydrometer). If you want to carbonate your cider, heat up a small amount of water and dissolve 3-4 tablespoons of sugar in it. Pour it into your 2 liter bottle, pour the cider back in, cap it and wait another three weeks and it will carbonate.
If your flavor isn't bold enough or sweet enough, get another can of frozen concentrate and add the pure juice to your 2 liter bottles with no extra water. You can also add more sugar now if you want but be aware that if you do add sugar and leave the cap on without releasing the pressure periodically - you'll end up with a carbonated drink. Actually, it will carbonate on it's own eventually but I think it takes a few months to do it on it's own.
Hard Cider doesn't last long around my house because I have several friends that really love it too. However, I've read that it ages just like wine and gets better and better as it ages. I hear that it is amazing after about 9 months but I've yet to be able to keep it around long enough to find out - in spite of the fact that I mostly make mine in 5 gallon batches! Another thing to be aware of is that when your first able to drink it, your cider will be cloudy. If your wanting it to look nice and clear, it will need to sit about another 2-3 weeks after the second time you get rid of the sediment. If it still has a lot of sediment, you might have to repeat the step with the pitcher again.
If you like it and want to make larger amounts, you can get a basic bewers kit with 6.5 gallon buckets. You'll also need to consider how you want to store it, bottles? Kegs? Something else? Also you need to be aware that if you do bottle it, your cider needs to have a specific gravity of less than one or you risk having bottles explode from pressure. There is a way around this though - if you heat your cider up again to 140 for 45 minutes, that will kill any active yeast that is left so you won't have any more fermentation going on and hence - no pressure build up. Be sure to let it cool down again before bottling. I personally haven't done this so I'm just telling what I've read. If your wanting to get serious I recommend doing more research and see what more experienced people than me have to say about it.
Have fun & enjoy!
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Better today - w00t!
Day 3 of playing DDR2 (Dance Dance Revolution 2 for wii) is much better than day 2 was... yesterday I stiffened up mid afternoon and could hardly move. Of course that meant I had to play the game more and work through the stiffness. I did that and then spent a good hour in the massage chair letting it work it's magic and get the kinks out. True it would be much better for me to actually go see my massage therapist but the chair is right in my living room and better than nothing. The results are good so far - today I'm a little tight but no where near as sore. And considering I just played DDR for like an hour or so - I feel good. There is another great side effect to playing the wii - I'm drinking way more water and less soda. Now for most people that probably isn't a big deal. For me though - that is huge. See - I hate the taste of plain water. I generally always drink flavored water or propel if I can get myself to drink any water at all. But, with the wii - my body is demanding just plain water and I don't even care how it tastes. About the only water I actually like the taste of is Fiji which is a pretty expensive water... right now though I'm drinking the ultra cheap nestle water with no problem. Amazing - a positive side effect I never expected.
In other news - I am still making my homemade hard apple cider and still going through it at a shocking rate. Of course I don't drink it all myself. Out of this last 5 gallon batch I took a gallon to a friends house for christmas and we polished it off between three people. Gave a half gallon away, put another gallon into a growler to maybe end up carbonating if I can keep my hands off it long enough and I have about 2 gallons left in the bucket. So really, between my roommate and I we've only gone through about a half gallon here at home in the last week and a half. As easy as it drinks that isn't too bad at all. This is the batch with the cherry flavor added and I really didn't notice much effect other than some extra bitterness. Don't think I'm going to mess with that again anytime soon. I have 6 more gallons working right now also - this will just be regular apple with no experimenting. Well other than using a mix of brown and white sugar that is! I've decided to hold off on experimenting until I actually am stocked up on the apple. I don't want to make a crappy batch and then be stuck without for three weeks while waiting for a new one! Plus I've heard that apple cider is kind of like wine in that it gets better with age. In order to test that theory I need to get to where we aren't drinking it as fast as I can make it! lol - easier said than done. I'll probably start another batch here in the next few days so I can get a good rhythm going with it.
Well - break time is over, time to get back to my game... ummm and to think about cleaning house sometime soon! ;)
In other news - I am still making my homemade hard apple cider and still going through it at a shocking rate. Of course I don't drink it all myself. Out of this last 5 gallon batch I took a gallon to a friends house for christmas and we polished it off between three people. Gave a half gallon away, put another gallon into a growler to maybe end up carbonating if I can keep my hands off it long enough and I have about 2 gallons left in the bucket. So really, between my roommate and I we've only gone through about a half gallon here at home in the last week and a half. As easy as it drinks that isn't too bad at all. This is the batch with the cherry flavor added and I really didn't notice much effect other than some extra bitterness. Don't think I'm going to mess with that again anytime soon. I have 6 more gallons working right now also - this will just be regular apple with no experimenting. Well other than using a mix of brown and white sugar that is! I've decided to hold off on experimenting until I actually am stocked up on the apple. I don't want to make a crappy batch and then be stuck without for three weeks while waiting for a new one! Plus I've heard that apple cider is kind of like wine in that it gets better with age. In order to test that theory I need to get to where we aren't drinking it as fast as I can make it! lol - easier said than done. I'll probably start another batch here in the next few days so I can get a good rhythm going with it.
Well - break time is over, time to get back to my game... ummm and to think about cleaning house sometime soon! ;)
Thursday, January 1, 2009
and to 2008 - good night and good riddance
And so we have reached the start of a new year, a new chapter in the saga of life. As with many, I am hopeful that 2009 will indeed be a better year. My roommate, Randi and I brought in the new year quietly - playing some rather physically demanding games on the wii and then watching the dog whisperer and dogtown on the national geographic channel. Today on national geographic we also watch some of Earth: a biography which I found very interesting as they talked about polar ice and the recent changes as well as historical changes. It makes me concerned for the melting polar ice and I'm troubled that it seems the changes are taking place much sooner and faster than the experts predicted. I both agree and disagree with the doomsayers about the future of the planet and our need to protect it. I think we look at it backwards most of the time. It isn't the planet we need to save, I think the Earth will save itself no matter what we do or choose not to do. If we keep going as we go, I think the planet will shake us off like the pests we are and will stabilize itself to try again - this time without humanity as we know it. Yet human nature is not to really see or care about the future as much as we should. If we really were able to comprehend what our actions now will cause later - no one would take up smoking or any other unhealthy lifestyle. But it is in our nature to think that bad things will always hit someone else and not ourselves. How many people do you know that are prepared for even a small disaster - say a week long power outage? I know a handful of people that think that having some kind of food and water on hand is a good idea and even less that actually do it. Yet a bad storm can happen anywhere and take power down for a week or more. Still when it happens, most people are not ready. What does that say for the future for our kind? If you do nothing else in this new year, take the time and make the effort to put some food, water, cash and basic first aide supplies aside - even if it is just a little. Make yourself a little more ready to deal with whatever may come than what you are today.
I hope that this year will be a much better year for everyone. I also hope that more people will start to see the importance of taking some basic precautions to protect themselves and their loved ones "just in case".
Peace to all!
Carol
I hope that this year will be a much better year for everyone. I also hope that more people will start to see the importance of taking some basic precautions to protect themselves and their loved ones "just in case".
Peace to all!
Carol
Monday, December 29, 2008
countdown to 2009...
I've heard it said that whatever your doing at midnight new years eve is what you'll be doing all next year. An interesting thought... how much thought do you put into what your doing new years eve? Do you think it does or doesn't have any effect on the rest of your year? Or do you think that is only if you let it?
This year will be the first year in several years that I'm not on pager duty for new years. I'm pretty happy about that because it is one less thing to worry about. However, I have yet to decide what, if anything I will be doing that night. The last several years I've gone to see a friends band play but this year they are playing an hour and a half from my house. I'm not real excited about the though of driving that far on new years and am leaning towards not going. It's a long drive on small roads on one of the most dangerous nights of the year to be driving. I'm not sure I really want to take that chance. In addition, I'm really feeling like I don't want to drink much - I really don't want to start the new year with a hangover. My other thought is I really don't want to spend a lot of money. If I go a long ways or decide to drink, then I need a hotel room and a cab to get back and forth - money I don't need to spend.
But if I don't do that - then what? I'm not really interested in watching all the festivities on TV... I'm not really interested in going where there will be big crowds... I'm kind of leaning towards a quiet night at home, maybe playing on the wii or doing something more positive than drinking a lot. But I have friends that do want me to come out and that makes it kind of a tough choice. I've been burnt out on the whole bar thing lately. Kind of bored with doing the same old things - ya know?
I am spending a fair amount of time each day playing the wii fit and have some very sore muscles to show for it. Each day starts with a body test which gives me my weight and BMI. Of course to be really accurate, you need to do that at the same time each day which I've yet to manage. Right now, my focus is more on making sure I do it and varying my routine enough to keep it interesting. I start off with the step and advanced step and do them at least twice each. From there I either do yoga, strength (which is pilates) or more aerobics until I get to 30 minutes. Then I take a break and come back to do whatever else I feel like after that. My weight is up two pounds over the last week but since I'm not doing it at the same time every day I don't know or really care how accurate that is. Plus some days I'm in sweats and others I'm in jeans so I'm sure all that makes a difference. I'm still focused on getting to feel better rather than anything else and think once the soreness starts to fade I will feel quite a bit better. Well that and when I start getting better at some of this stuff. My balance is particularly bad so I'll be really happy when that starts getting better. I think that is probably a big part of why I feel so far out of shape. I've noticed that I don't move with the same ease and control as I am used to and really want to get that back. I know - I shouldn't find it shocking that such things fade with time as you don't use those muscles as often. I do find it funny that my wii fit age was as low as 36 before I got so sore and now it is up to 39... it will come back down as I adjust to the new activity level. I'm actually kind of glad for the soreness because it reminds me of what I need to be doing in order to get to where I want to go... in this case the old saying is true - pain is just weakness leaving the body!
This year will be the first year in several years that I'm not on pager duty for new years. I'm pretty happy about that because it is one less thing to worry about. However, I have yet to decide what, if anything I will be doing that night. The last several years I've gone to see a friends band play but this year they are playing an hour and a half from my house. I'm not real excited about the though of driving that far on new years and am leaning towards not going. It's a long drive on small roads on one of the most dangerous nights of the year to be driving. I'm not sure I really want to take that chance. In addition, I'm really feeling like I don't want to drink much - I really don't want to start the new year with a hangover. My other thought is I really don't want to spend a lot of money. If I go a long ways or decide to drink, then I need a hotel room and a cab to get back and forth - money I don't need to spend.
But if I don't do that - then what? I'm not really interested in watching all the festivities on TV... I'm not really interested in going where there will be big crowds... I'm kind of leaning towards a quiet night at home, maybe playing on the wii or doing something more positive than drinking a lot. But I have friends that do want me to come out and that makes it kind of a tough choice. I've been burnt out on the whole bar thing lately. Kind of bored with doing the same old things - ya know?
I am spending a fair amount of time each day playing the wii fit and have some very sore muscles to show for it. Each day starts with a body test which gives me my weight and BMI. Of course to be really accurate, you need to do that at the same time each day which I've yet to manage. Right now, my focus is more on making sure I do it and varying my routine enough to keep it interesting. I start off with the step and advanced step and do them at least twice each. From there I either do yoga, strength (which is pilates) or more aerobics until I get to 30 minutes. Then I take a break and come back to do whatever else I feel like after that. My weight is up two pounds over the last week but since I'm not doing it at the same time every day I don't know or really care how accurate that is. Plus some days I'm in sweats and others I'm in jeans so I'm sure all that makes a difference. I'm still focused on getting to feel better rather than anything else and think once the soreness starts to fade I will feel quite a bit better. Well that and when I start getting better at some of this stuff. My balance is particularly bad so I'll be really happy when that starts getting better. I think that is probably a big part of why I feel so far out of shape. I've noticed that I don't move with the same ease and control as I am used to and really want to get that back. I know - I shouldn't find it shocking that such things fade with time as you don't use those muscles as often. I do find it funny that my wii fit age was as low as 36 before I got so sore and now it is up to 39... it will come back down as I adjust to the new activity level. I'm actually kind of glad for the soreness because it reminds me of what I need to be doing in order to get to where I want to go... in this case the old saying is true - pain is just weakness leaving the body!
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