Quick Shout

Learning graphical user interfaces at school this week and grasping it pretty easily so I have a few spare minutes to drop a line.

Monday my intake was coffee, yogurt, healthy choice lunch, a snack bar, grilled steak, red potatoes, and a 5 oz glass of dry red wine: 1,280.  I did 210 body-weight squats: 7 sets of 30 (when I woke up, one set per 10 minute break at work, one set at start of lunch and one right before it ended, one when I got off work, and one before bed).  I also cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the grout lines on the counters, cooked dinner, and then cleaned the kitchen again.  Water intake was 80 oz.

I actually woke up yesterday with some pretty sore thighs.  Weeee.

Yesterday my intake was coffee, yogurt, healthy choice lunch, a snack bar w/some peanut butter, and 11 pieces of nigiri sushi (balls of white rice with slices of raw tuna, yellow tail, and octopus on top): 1309.  I did 210 front leg-lifts: again 7 sets of 30 in the same intervals.  By the last set before bed my lower abs were screaming.  I also helped Snackers bathe Vladdy and then I spent 45 minutes training him to lay on his new pillow in the bedroom and 15 minutes playing and rough-housing with him as a reward (I know, 45 minutes seems like a lot for "sit/stay" training but he's an extremely hyperactive dog with an exceptionally short attention span.  Every time a cat walked by or Piper shifted in her bed, or Snackers got up to do something Vladdy would jump up and it was back to square one).  Water intake was 110 oz.

I woke up this morning sore in both my thighs and lower abs ... upper abs are moderately tired but not overly sore.

It's funny because they say that muscle pain from working out is always the worst on day 3.  So today I'm doing kneeling push-ups, 7 sets of 30 which means tomorrow my thighs will hurt more than they do today, my abs will hurt more than they do today, and my arms/chest will be sore.  I guess that means I'll have to be creative with what I do tomorrow - something restorative and cardio would be ideal.  I've asked Snackers for a treadmill for Christmas because it's been windy, rainy, and cold here lately but I really want to get back to walking.  Plus I can put Vladdy on the treaddy during winter because he's a bigger wuss about the cold than Piper.  No surprise really, he has zero fat, extremely thin fur, and only one jacket that I could find in his size that's not very thick/warm.  If I had more time I'd crochet him a better one...then again he'd probably just destroy it.

I found a whole slew of new quests that I can do on Fitocracy so that's highly motivational!!!  I had gotten to the part where I'd done everything that I was physically capable of doing so I was just muddling through doing whatever.  Now there are new quests (because I've leveled up I guess) that I am physically capable of doing (though I'll have to get creative on my access to weights for some of them) and I'm all stoked about it.

However, to those of you who think I am just making excuses or giving up.  I guess if you've never studied computer programming you probably can't understand how hard it can be which is why my brother, a computer programmer, is one of the few people who did understand and support my need for a break from blogging.  The simple programs you use on your computers and ipads every day that do silly, stupid, simple things are extremely complex and took a team of people weeks or even months to create.  Just writing a program that prints a single, simple line of text to the screen and does nothing else requires a half-dozen lines of code to create.  I've been trying to push myself in too many different directions and it's showing.  Last week I completed an assignment on time and submitted it on time, and wrote it correctly but submitted it to the wrong class.  I've never, in 77 weeks of class, done that before - and it's the third stupid mistake I've made in this one class.  I'm usually a very methodical, careful, precise person.  Mistakes like this can only mean that I'm trying to go too fast and I'm not taking my time or paying close enough attention to what I'm doing.  That's unusual for me - highly unusual.  Those of you who know me / went to school with me can attest to that.  Ki, for example: we were students together at George Wythe University in 2000 where we both had a 4.0 GPA because we were both extremely, obsessively, diligent in our studies.


Walk a mile folks ... that's all I'm sayin'.


p.s. 266 continued posting for almost a year after she stopped weighing.  Her posts consistently reported two scoops of ice cream every single day for months before she finally stopped posting altogether because people were saying mean, horrible things to her.  I guess I can understand why she stopped posting under those circumstances but it's harsh to start talking about "rejecting 400" considering that I haven't been eating or posting bad food and I'm not quitting on the intake/logging or the activity - just writing daily stupid posts about random shit that most of you don't really care to read anyway.  This blog spikes on Mondays and on the 14th of each month.  Weigh-in days and picture days respectively.  Which means the majority of you just pop in to see how I'm doing and don't really care about my idle prattle anyway.  I didn't post my weight this week because it didn't change (up or down) from last week so it seemed like wasted space.  I didn't post a picture last month because I hadn't made progress so it seemed like wasted space.  It doesn't mean I'm quitting, it means I'm limiting my prattle to when I actually have something worth saying instead of sitting here day-after-day trying to think of something to write about when very few people really care to read it anyway. 

Today is the 14th so I will leave it up to all of you.  I've gone nowhere in my weight efforts BUT, I'd be more than happy to have Snackers take a picture when he gets home from work (I even have a brand new camera that I picked up dirt-cheap on black Friday) and post it if you want me to ... or I can wait until I've lost enough more weight that a new picture to the collection would actually matter.  Your call.  Cast your votes.

Join Me

I am going to take a bit of a break from blogging.  I'm still logging my intake on CalorieCount.com and I am still logging my daily activity on Fitocracy.com.  I will also be logging my weight both places as well as updating it here.

If any of you would like to join me in either of these locations, my profile on CalorieCount.com is lady_muse and my profile on Fitocracy.com is LadyMuse82.  CalorieCount.com is free and anyone can sign-up/use it.  You can add friends to watch, join conversations on public message boards, log your own journal entries, browse recipes w/nutritional info etc.  I pretty much only use it to log my caloric intake and weight though.  Occasionally I'll reply to something or post something on the message boards but it's rare (like 3 posts in the last year, rare).

Fitocracy is still by-invite only but I have an invite link that should work for the first 9 people who use it.  Fitocracy, for those of you who haven't seen my previous mentions of it, is a type of live action game where you complete physical activities like walking, squats, lifts, sports, stairs, etc. and then log the activity in Fitocracy and you earn points for everything you log.  There are activity quests that you can complete and achievement badges that you can earn for completing certain tasks or cumulative goals.  There are groups that you can join/start based on your personal interests (for example I am a member of my family's group, a group for computer programmers, and I started a group for StarTrek fans).  Some groups have their own challenges too where you try to earn the most activity points out of the group in a certain period of time.

It's fun, easy to use, and motivational.  And my favorite thing about it is that it doesn't require a lot of time to use.  You pop in, log your activity and you're done.  If you want to you can socialize and post comments or update your own comments but you don't have to do those things in order to keep earning points.  You can follow people so that what they do is posted on your main page (just like with Facebook) and they can follow you etc.  It's a really neat little community so far with a wide range of people using it and I've found that almost everyone I've come across is very warm, inviting, encouraging, and motivational.  It's not a place where the super-athletics typically pick-on or put down those of us that are struggling.  Some of the people there have accomplished some amazing things and they, especially, are extremely uplifting, inspirational, and supportive.

So if you're interested visit the link below to sign up and follow me.  Post comments to this thread to let me know if you have trouble signing up because I may actually have to send you the invite via email, I'm not sure how it works exactly.  I'll remove the link when my 9 invites have been used so if it's still here, chances are good you can get in.

http://ftcy.co/udMnRl

Not Working

Oish.  Something just isn't working.  I haven't stepped on the scale since Monday but intuition tells me it won't be good when I do.  For the first time in a long time I am consistently sleeping until the alarm goes off every morning and waking up feeling like I could still use another hour or two.  I spend my lunch breaks studying and then spend the whole night studying again too.  200 Jumping Jacks is pathetic but I can't justify taking time out to exercise when I have so much to learn.  Graduation is only four months away now (less actually!).  I'm nearing the end of my current classes and I will only have two more classes after these before it's over.  I'm starting to stress about coming up with the extra money to start paying off my loans - I'd like to get my unsubsidized loans paid off before my subsidized loans start earning interest in ten months.  I plan on getting a second job after I graduate, and I have been making payments to my loans for awhile now, but this is becoming crunch time at school and I just can't afford to blow it now.  I have to look at my priorities and, right now, the top priority after work is school.  I even feel like the time I spend writing these posts every morning and updating them every night is time I could be doing something more productive.  I haven't pleasure read a book since September.  *sigh*

This is just so frustrating.

Note: The above post was written on Thursday or Friday - I honestly can't remember which.  Aside from school this is the first time I've opened a web browser since I got off work on Friday.  I managed another 100% assignment so my grade for both classes is back up to an A+ but it's just going to keep getting harder.  I get a two-week break for Christmas, hopefully I'll be able to use that well.

I'm burned out on blogging - I'll be honest about it.  It's becoming repetitive and starting to feel more like a daily chore than the fun, motivational experience that it used to be.  I think I'm just over-stressed.

Losing Balance

I'm starting to remember why I wanted to be a runner.  I've gotten to a point where a good, solid work out takes more than an hour to accomplish now with the resources that I have available to me.  With school getting progressively harder as I near graduation I'm finding it hard to balance my time for exercise.  The jumping jacks are nice because I can pop sets of 50 in throughout my day.  I've converted my breaks at work into exercise opportunities to compensate for my lack of evening activity.  But I'm having a really hard time finding and justifying the time that I need to do, for example, a 5 mile walk.  Last night on the three week challenge (which I haven't even really started since I've not had one successful week of following it yet) I was supposed to do a 5 mile walk with sprints but after supper I thought "I'll study for awhile and then go after Snackers leaves for his concert".  He left and I continued to study - rereading my previous chapters of java, writing every sample program in the book and then trying to modify them to do different things so that I could practice my own code writing instead of just copying something out of a book that someone else wrote, and started on a program of my own (a dumb and simple one) to challenge myself.  Before I knew it Snackers was pulling in the drive-way and I thought to myself 'gee that was a short concert'.  Then I looked at the clock on my computer and realized it was midnight and I'd been at my computer for almost six straight hours and had totally spaced on exercising.

I'm so tempted to take a break.  Not give up, but put aside the blog and the weighing etc.  I stopped weighing for awhile and it didn't do me any good, I know, but I was still logging and blogging and I'm starting to just get exhausted with how much time it's taking out of my day.  On the other hand I'm afraid that if I do that I'll start gaining again, which I don't want to do.  But then there's this relatively expensive education that I'm going to have to be paying for here soon, which likely means I'll be getting a second job (or paid internship if possible) which will take even MORE time out of my day.  *sigh*.  I am so exhausted and it sucks because I've not done anything really exhausting or substantial in almost a week.




Food:
100 oz of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 yogurt
1 fruit bar
1 healthy choice lunch
1 tbsp peanut butter
5 oz turkey kielbasa
1 serving rice
-----------------------------
Daily Caloric Intake: 1,218





Activity:
Jumping Jacks: 200
Another super busy day.

A Fun Post

I'm borrowing today's post idea from SpunkySuzi because I am tired of whining about how I feel after being sick or how obnoxious it is that it's taking me so long to get rid of this 10 lbs that I gained back last month, or how busy I've been trying to juggle work, school, exercise, and a social life so I wanted to do something fun.  Please join in the fun and post your answers, I am looking forward to reading them.

1. Do you have a pet(s)?  If so what is the name of your favorite pet and what kind of animal/breed is it?
2. What is the strangest thing you've said today (intentionally or accidentally)?
3. What color socks are you wearing right now?
4. Close your eyes, move your head around a bit, then stop and open your eyes.  What is the first thing you see (besides your computer screen)?
5. What is your favorite book ever?  Do you own a copy?
6. Name a movie you thought you'd hate but you ended up actually liking.
7. Name a movie you thought you'd like but you ended up actually hating.
8. What is something you buy that you always save the receipt for?
9. Is the weight on your Driver's License / ID card accurate?  If not, how far is it off and is it high or low?
10. Nuclear war breaks out and you've been invited to stay in someone's bomb shelter.  You can bring only one electronic item.  What is it?  (You can bring other, non-electronic stuff too).

My Answers:

1. Piper, the Miniature Pinscher is my first born and, I dare say, my favorite.
2. "Vladdy leave the ice outside."
3. I'm barefoot, as usual.
4. Four AA batteries (back-ups for my wireless mouse and desk phone).
5. Single favorite book is Watership Down by Richard Adams.  I do own a copy and it was quite expensive to boot.
6. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  Dumbledore ... well, ya know.  But it was still a great movie.
7. Twilight ... great book series but the movies were mostly a let-down.
8. Stamps (I get reimbursed for them from work).
9. Nope!  It says 250, 24 lbs high.  Used to be waaaaay low.
10. My iPad.  Silly question.  I know, I asked it but really ... I'm sure someone else will bring a radio or something useful.

Food:
100 oz of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 yogurt
1 fruit bar
1 healthy choice lunch
1 fish burrito
--------------------------
Daily Caloric Intake: 1,011




Activity:
Jumping Jacks: 250
Yoga: 45 minutes
I meant to do more but Snackers went to a free concert so I took the opportunity to study all night and write practice programs in Java.  Before I knew it he was home and it was midnight.  Woops.