I had a very productive weekend workout this past weekend. I usually take Friday and Saturdays off. But for some reason, I was itching to go Friday after work.
I started off warming up on the treadmill for about 8 minutes because I was planning on working my legs. But after my 8 minutes had passed, I figured I would jog for a little bit just to get my heart rate up some more before I started my exercises. 50 minutes and 4 miles later, I realize that this is the longest and the furthest I have ever ran in my entire life! I know, You are thinking, WHAT?! That's crazy, right? Because I am a Spinning instructor, and teach about 5 classes a week. Four miles should be no big deal. But no. I have always hated running with a passion. It usually makes my ankles hurt, my knees ache, and my lower back throb as soon as I start picking up the pace. But for some reason, that stuff wasn't bothering me, and I think I was actually enjoying myself! But I stopped at 4 miles because my cross-trainers were starting to rub my ankles, not exactly the best running shoes. I hopped off the treadmill feeling pretty proud of myself for obtaining that small goal, and proceeded to my leg weights. I was still sore this morning in the calves from that run. But good stuff!
Saturday morning, I headed over to the Madison 51 Courthouse to sub a Spin class. Great group over there, we had a good class and I think I may have taught them a thing or two.
Sunday afternoon, I was back over at the Lakeland Courthouse for my 2:45 hour Spin class. I had spent the previous hour making a new playlist on my wonderful ipod 4.0 (see previous post about why I hate the upgrade). Synced the ipod. Got to the gym, and looked at playlist again, and only half of it was there. Wonderful. Had to throw some random songs in a play list and wing it. By the way, nobody at the gym could find the key to open the spin room, it took 15 minutes to find the key, so at least I had a little time to make up something to do in class. Went a little late to make up the time so that my people still get their Sunday hour of spinning in, then worked my shoulders and arms.
All in all, very successful weekend workout! And had myself some chocolate ice cream Sunday night. (Yes, it was Edy's Slow Churned with 1/2 the fat, but it was still ice cream!)
As of Monday morning, calves are still sore from that run on Friday! Might just have to do that again sometime....
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Breaking the Rule
So I'm breaking the the unwritten cardinal rule to never blog about work. It is never, ever a good idea.
But I only have 2 days left at ESF, today and tomorrow. I have to say, it is bitter sweet. I have been here for over 5 years. This is my second home, here in my little grey cubicle staring at my double monitors working on various student loan issues. These people are like family. I definitely see them more than my own family. Occasionally, we wear jeans to work, and flip flops on most days. We even have cake once in a blue moon, and today since they are sending me off with a few extra hundred calories to celebrate my contribution to this place. We all have our cell phones conveniently placed beside our keyboard in case we get a personal call. Ipods and headphones are sitting around most desks as we make sure we have some tunes to listen to throughout the day - which is where I get more of my inspirations for new Spin classes. At any point in the day, you can hear people sitting around talking, and more than likely not about anything work-related. We all talk about what we have eaten for the day, the workouts we had the day before, some talk about their kids, others talk about somebody else's kids.
Needless to say, ESF has been such a great first job, and it was an extremely easy transition from full-time college student to full-time employee working 8 - 5. I am a little reluctant to leave the familiarity and the ease of this place, but it is time to move on. I would have been stupid not to take the opportunity that presented itself.
I start my new job on September 13th, and in the meantime, I will just be here and there. I have aspirations to paint the living room while I'm on vacation, but that probably won't work out since Labor Day weekend is coming up, and a final trip to see Dave Matthews is the following weekend.
As of Tuesday afternoon at 4:00, I will no longer be reporting in at 7:30 in the mornings at ESF. :(
To all my friends there, I'll see you when I see you, and Good Luck!
But I only have 2 days left at ESF, today and tomorrow. I have to say, it is bitter sweet. I have been here for over 5 years. This is my second home, here in my little grey cubicle staring at my double monitors working on various student loan issues. These people are like family. I definitely see them more than my own family. Occasionally, we wear jeans to work, and flip flops on most days. We even have cake once in a blue moon, and today since they are sending me off with a few extra hundred calories to celebrate my contribution to this place. We all have our cell phones conveniently placed beside our keyboard in case we get a personal call. Ipods and headphones are sitting around most desks as we make sure we have some tunes to listen to throughout the day - which is where I get more of my inspirations for new Spin classes. At any point in the day, you can hear people sitting around talking, and more than likely not about anything work-related. We all talk about what we have eaten for the day, the workouts we had the day before, some talk about their kids, others talk about somebody else's kids.
Needless to say, ESF has been such a great first job, and it was an extremely easy transition from full-time college student to full-time employee working 8 - 5. I am a little reluctant to leave the familiarity and the ease of this place, but it is time to move on. I would have been stupid not to take the opportunity that presented itself.
I start my new job on September 13th, and in the meantime, I will just be here and there. I have aspirations to paint the living room while I'm on vacation, but that probably won't work out since Labor Day weekend is coming up, and a final trip to see Dave Matthews is the following weekend.
As of Tuesday afternoon at 4:00, I will no longer be reporting in at 7:30 in the mornings at ESF. :(
To all my friends there, I'll see you when I see you, and Good Luck!
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Dexter By Design
Dexter By Design by Jeff LindsayMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
First of all, I am a huge fan of the Showtime series, and watched seasons 1 - 4 before I ever picked up any of the Dexter Novels. I'd like to think that watching the show first does not skew my perception of the novels, but a friend pointed out to me that when I read the books first and then watch the show in most situations, I like the books better.
So, with that said, I like the show better. Not to say I have not enjoyed the books. Dexter in the Dark threw me off a little, and I was a little concerned about where the series was going, but Dexter By Design has put it back on track for me.
Isn't it nice when things just work out? This book was moving along rather nicely, like most of the Dexter novels, with last few chapters having the big finish. Dexter has gained most of his wits back from the last book, but still has a hard time getting back into his usual routine, due to a new nemisis prowling arounnd in Miami. While ending with a slightly assumed clif-hanger, I am still excited for Jeff Lindsay's new Dexter novel due out September 7!
View all my reviews
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Best Dressed!
My picture, along with Meg and Owenne, was one of 13 selected for the Best Dressed blog from MyScoop (picture #12)! This was taken last Saturday at the Belhaven Nights street festival. Fun Times!
Since I'm a goob, I was kind of excited about it! Here is the picture:
I would like to thank Belk for the shirt I bought......and I have no idea where my purse or shorts or shoes came from. :)
Since I'm a goob, I was kind of excited about it! Here is the picture:
"These three lovely ladies looked great in their tanks and shorts. From right to left: Meg, Owenne, and Lacey Outlaw."
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Netflix Move Night - The Blind Side
So I finally got The Blind Side from Netflix and started to watch it. I had heard that it was a tear jerker, and I'm not big on watching movies that make me cry.....but we finally decided to watch it.
I have to say, this was definately one of the better movies I have seen in a very long time. Loved Sandra Bullock, she definately deserved that Oscar for her role. If you haven't seen it, go watch it right now! Don't worry about crying - I didn't cry once, but not to say it wasn't touching.
Great movie. 5 Stars.
Great movie. 5 Stars.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Is This "Healthy"?
Ok, so the word around the office is that someone (who's name I won't mention has been trying to make healthier choices due to a health condition that he has) ate a "healthy" meal, which consisted of bbq ribs and a cheese/broccoli casserole. He's not overweight, so he doesn't necessarily have to worry about eating healthy for that reason, but this medical condition definitely affects his health in a negative way when he makes poor food choices.
Let me start with the Ribs. In no way, shape, or form are ribs ever healthy. It doesn't matter if you don't put anything on them and bake them or grill them or smoke them or whatever. They are never a health food! Pork is the fattiest meat you can ever eat, regardless of what cut it comes from (except maybe the tenderloin) or how much "fat" you see on the meat. "Lean" babyback ribs have about 17 grams of fat, 240 calories, 850 grams of sodium PER 2 RIBS. Not 2 racks of ribs. But per 2 single ribs. I do not know a single person in my world that I have ever seen only eat 2 ribs, and my family goes through a lot of ribs.
Now, I certainly am not going to turn my nose up at eating some babybacks when my husband has been smoking them for hours on the grill, but I'm certainly not going to kid myself into thinking I'm eating something healthy. I know what I am getting into before I start, and try to limit myself to about 5 ribs.
Ok. Cheese and Broccoli casserole? Come on now. Anything with the name "casserole" is guaranteed to be bad! Isn't butter in there? And white rice? And not to mention cheese? That's like a sugar/sodium explosion! I'm not even sure what to say about that. That little bit of broccoli has no chance to try to make that a healthy dish!
So, my answer is No! This is not healthy! Don't trick yourself into thinking that it is. :)
Let me start with the Ribs. In no way, shape, or form are ribs ever healthy. It doesn't matter if you don't put anything on them and bake them or grill them or smoke them or whatever. They are never a health food! Pork is the fattiest meat you can ever eat, regardless of what cut it comes from (except maybe the tenderloin) or how much "fat" you see on the meat. "Lean" babyback ribs have about 17 grams of fat, 240 calories, 850 grams of sodium PER 2 RIBS. Not 2 racks of ribs. But per 2 single ribs. I do not know a single person in my world that I have ever seen only eat 2 ribs, and my family goes through a lot of ribs.
Now, I certainly am not going to turn my nose up at eating some babybacks when my husband has been smoking them for hours on the grill, but I'm certainly not going to kid myself into thinking I'm eating something healthy. I know what I am getting into before I start, and try to limit myself to about 5 ribs.
Ok. Cheese and Broccoli casserole? Come on now. Anything with the name "casserole" is guaranteed to be bad! Isn't butter in there? And white rice? And not to mention cheese? That's like a sugar/sodium explosion! I'm not even sure what to say about that. That little bit of broccoli has no chance to try to make that a healthy dish!
So, my answer is No! This is not healthy! Don't trick yourself into thinking that it is. :)
Ipod Touch 4.0 RANT
Read this if you are thinking of up grading your iphone or ipod touch to the new software. I finally upgraded my Ipod from the original software that it came with, which was 2.(something), to the new 4.0 software that is available.....against my husband's recomendation to not do so.
BIG MISTAKE.
This is my story.
Gripe #1:
I use my ipod as my sole method for playlists in my Spin classes. I rely on this thing pretty heavily. I have put hours and hours into organizing my music and making playlists to have a good flow that not only sounds good from song to song, but also creates a mood for the ride and correlates to the movements that we are doing. I think being able to pull together music that has feeling in the ride is what makes a class special, and it has worked for me so far.
Last week, the next day after the upgrade before I knew things had gone badly, I selected a playlist and the class description from my notebook for class that day. Plug it in, and start the warm up. I get the correct warm up song, the correct second song, but wrong third song which was also the last song on the playlist which should have had up to 13 songs. So in the middle of class, they had to sit there while I found random music that could get us through the class. I did not like this one bit. After class, I glance through the rest of the playlists that I had made, and they were all the same. I was going to have to sit down re-load every single playlist that was on my ipod. Just counted them to be sure, and there are 82 playlists.
I'm not happy about this.
Gripe #2:
Back into the Spin classes. In the Settings option, I always select the Gereral>Auto-Lock>Never option so that my screen will stay on for the entire class. Before the upgrade, I just hit the "never" button, then the Home button, and go straight back to my music. Well, it doesn't work that way anymore. And for awhile, I thought I would not be able to use the Never Lock option and would have to constantly Unlock my ipod every couple of minute that I didn't touch the screen. Not Cool At All. But as I sat down and played with it for a little while, I realized if I hit the Never lock option, then go back to the General screen, then back to the Settings screen, then back to Home, then back to my music, that it would stay. Not that big of a deal if I do it before hand, but why couldn't they just use the ease of keeping it the way it was before??
Gripe #3:
The 4.0 software's supposed cool new thing is its ability to organize all of the apps into groups on your first screen so that you don't have 5 or 6 different pages of apps where you can never find what you need. Such as having all your games together in one block, your social apps in one, and your entertainment apps in another. So I took the time to drag all of my apps to make all of the appropriate categories. After I had organized everything, I noticed the Facebook App had a notification. So I tried to open it. It pops up, and immediately shuts down. Do I delete it and try to reistall it, thinking something had messed up when I was moving things, and the same thing happened. Then I try to open another app, and it does the same thing. Finally I tried syncing my ipod to itunes, and then it magically worked. So this was not that big of a deal either, but with all the great "user-friendly" crap you hear about ipod, you never hear any bad press about anything.
Gripe #4:
This doesn't necessarily pertain to me, but Jonas is the guy in charge at his work of helping anybody that has a company issued iphone that has trouble with syncing their work outlook email. Most of the time, it doesn't work the way it had in the past, and he has to go in and change a bunch of settings. He advised everyone at his work to not upgrade at all until Apple puts out a newer version that will import the email so that the average user can actually figure out how to load their own email and won't have to use his IT skills to fix everybody's phones.
Gripe #5:
The battery runs out super fast.
Ok, just to be fair, there is one thing that I do like about the new software. As I was fussing in Gripe #1 where all my playlists were screwed up, I found that if I opened a playlist and pulled it down, that there are now editing buttons and a search bar at the top where the playlists can be edited on the ipod. With the old software, only a tempory "On-The-Go" playlist could be made. But now, I could make several new ones and save them each without having to go to the computer. This is very cool.
So my point in this whole ipod soap-box is that you hear all this crap about how cool and easy and hip it is to have any Apple product, and then you hear all this bad press about any Microsoft product....but WHO CARES?? Well, Apple has its flaws too. And just because you put a bunch of Apple stickers on your Toyota Prius (yes, I'm talking to that jerk that cut me off on I-55 the other day that had 5 Apple stickers on his car signifying all the different Apple products that he owns) does not make you cool and hip.
End of Rant.
BIG MISTAKE.
This is my story.
Gripe #1:
I use my ipod as my sole method for playlists in my Spin classes. I rely on this thing pretty heavily. I have put hours and hours into organizing my music and making playlists to have a good flow that not only sounds good from song to song, but also creates a mood for the ride and correlates to the movements that we are doing. I think being able to pull together music that has feeling in the ride is what makes a class special, and it has worked for me so far.
Last week, the next day after the upgrade before I knew things had gone badly, I selected a playlist and the class description from my notebook for class that day. Plug it in, and start the warm up. I get the correct warm up song, the correct second song, but wrong third song which was also the last song on the playlist which should have had up to 13 songs. So in the middle of class, they had to sit there while I found random music that could get us through the class. I did not like this one bit. After class, I glance through the rest of the playlists that I had made, and they were all the same. I was going to have to sit down re-load every single playlist that was on my ipod. Just counted them to be sure, and there are 82 playlists.
I'm not happy about this.
Gripe #2:
Back into the Spin classes. In the Settings option, I always select the Gereral>Auto-Lock>Never option so that my screen will stay on for the entire class. Before the upgrade, I just hit the "never" button, then the Home button, and go straight back to my music. Well, it doesn't work that way anymore. And for awhile, I thought I would not be able to use the Never Lock option and would have to constantly Unlock my ipod every couple of minute that I didn't touch the screen. Not Cool At All. But as I sat down and played with it for a little while, I realized if I hit the Never lock option, then go back to the General screen, then back to the Settings screen, then back to Home, then back to my music, that it would stay. Not that big of a deal if I do it before hand, but why couldn't they just use the ease of keeping it the way it was before??
Gripe #3:
The 4.0 software's supposed cool new thing is its ability to organize all of the apps into groups on your first screen so that you don't have 5 or 6 different pages of apps where you can never find what you need. Such as having all your games together in one block, your social apps in one, and your entertainment apps in another. So I took the time to drag all of my apps to make all of the appropriate categories. After I had organized everything, I noticed the Facebook App had a notification. So I tried to open it. It pops up, and immediately shuts down. Do I delete it and try to reistall it, thinking something had messed up when I was moving things, and the same thing happened. Then I try to open another app, and it does the same thing. Finally I tried syncing my ipod to itunes, and then it magically worked. So this was not that big of a deal either, but with all the great "user-friendly" crap you hear about ipod, you never hear any bad press about anything.
Gripe #4:
This doesn't necessarily pertain to me, but Jonas is the guy in charge at his work of helping anybody that has a company issued iphone that has trouble with syncing their work outlook email. Most of the time, it doesn't work the way it had in the past, and he has to go in and change a bunch of settings. He advised everyone at his work to not upgrade at all until Apple puts out a newer version that will import the email so that the average user can actually figure out how to load their own email and won't have to use his IT skills to fix everybody's phones.
Gripe #5:
The battery runs out super fast.
Ok, just to be fair, there is one thing that I do like about the new software. As I was fussing in Gripe #1 where all my playlists were screwed up, I found that if I opened a playlist and pulled it down, that there are now editing buttons and a search bar at the top where the playlists can be edited on the ipod. With the old software, only a tempory "On-The-Go" playlist could be made. But now, I could make several new ones and save them each without having to go to the computer. This is very cool.
So my point in this whole ipod soap-box is that you hear all this crap about how cool and easy and hip it is to have any Apple product, and then you hear all this bad press about any Microsoft product....but WHO CARES?? Well, Apple has its flaws too. And just because you put a bunch of Apple stickers on your Toyota Prius (yes, I'm talking to that jerk that cut me off on I-55 the other day that had 5 Apple stickers on his car signifying all the different Apple products that he owns) does not make you cool and hip.
End of Rant.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Gotta New 'Do!
So, I don't like to keep my hair the same for too long, and since I've been blond-ish for about 3 months, it was time for a change. Started my fall hair early. Maybe the fall hair will help the fall temps get here sooner.
Gotta teach Abs, Turbo, and Bootcamp all by my lonesome tonight. I hope I don't have red sweat dripping from my head.
Gotta teach Abs, Turbo, and Bootcamp all by my lonesome tonight. I hope I don't have red sweat dripping from my head.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Mimi's 90th Birthday!
This weekend, we celebrated my grandmother's 90th birthday! I felt it was kind of a big deal, so I took alot of pictures. If anyone wants to download any, you can find the large picture on my picasa site:
 |
| Mimi's 90th Birthday! |
Here are a few!
Here is Mimi with her strawberry cake!
slightly blurry picture of Aunt Betty, Dad, Uncle Wesley, and a rare picture of Mimi laughing!
Mimi and Mom
Mom, Mimi, and Lisa, with some stellar poses! :)
Me and Mimi
My dad and Tommy
Sandy and Aunt Betty
Aunt Betty, Uncle Ken, Dal and Sandy
Lisa frying up the okra! Yummmm!!
Uncle Wesley trying to stay cool
Busted Dad sneaking a bite of chick off the grill!
Mom and Me
Mallary and Sandy
Mallary, Sandy, Dad, Me, and Kristie
My brother and myself
Wes and Kristie
Lora Lee and Shelby
Mom and Dad
Cody and Mallary (and no, I don't think your eyes are what looks alike, it is the nose.)
I didn't put every single picture on here, so if there is one you were looking for, but didn't see, it's on my picasa site. So make sure you check that out too!
Happy Birthday, Mimi!
Book Review: Exile
Exile: A Novel by Richard North PattersonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
When it comes down to the story of the book, it was good. But all the history and details of the story were what made it so long, and to me, what made it so boring. It took me over a year to get into it, and was never really interested in it. But I hate to leave a book half-read, so I had to finish it.
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