Friday Fitness

If I blog about all my healthy progress, it'll feel more like progress right?  This has been a long week. Nothing really terrible happened. But if just felt like it dragged so badly.

I did okay at working out this week.
M- Jillian Michael's No More Trouble Zones
T- 2 mile run/walk
W- I slept in - I've been fighting a cold and Nyquil-induced sleep sounded smarter
Th- 3 mile run/walk
F- I forgot my alarm, woops!

Oh, and for my concerned dad - I took vitamins every day this past two weeks. Now you can stop the phone lectures ;)

I'm working on downloading some new music for my ipod. I'm really not picky with music - I like a little bit of everything. But I need certain songs for my work outs. For weight lifting, I need heavy rock. Bring on the Staind, Korn, Three Days Grace, all the drums and yelling you can get. For running, I need a strong beat to keep pace to. I can do heavy rock, but I like lots of variety or I get bored. I stumbled across this list via Pinterest, full of 90's music. Some I already had, some I can't believe I didn't have yet. I'm also pretty behind on current music since I get one radio station here and I don't even listen to it most days. So I browsed Billboard's lists and downloaded some new songs from there. If you're curious, I prefer country for cleaning. Which I plan on doing tomorrow, so some of that got downloaded too. Dancing while cleaning counts as fitness right?

A Saturday Night Organizing Binge

I've had a rough couple of months of the cyclical routine of eating bad and being lazy, then trying to work out and eat better for a couple days, then going back to unhealthy, then guilt, then back, then forward. Back and forth, back and forth. Somewhere in there a couple pounds has been added on.

Since it's not helping me any, I'm trying to quit the cycle and just make smaller steps. Jeff recently had oral surgery that will not heal completely for nearly six months, so that's made a huge shift in our eating habit. I've decided that instead of getting frustrated with the limitations, I should use this as an opportunity to shift our eating habits in general and move towards a healthier diet. Less chips and soda, more fruit and water. Less beef, more ground turkey and chicken. Less eating out, more healthy stand-bys stocked and ready to go in our pantry/freezer.

I've been using stress and not wanting to spend so much time in the kitchen as an excuse to pick up food so much. But if I took a little time on the weekends stocking up on easy to make healthy food at home, or pre-made frozen meals ready to be heated up, that wouldn't be a valid excuse so often.

Long story, short. I'm unhappy with the way I'm eating and I'm attempting to start making changes.

Starting with getting recipes in order! I've got recipes everywhere. Pinterest, recipe books, bookmarks, written down on post-its on the fridge, etc. etc. etc. What a mess. I started a OneNotebook almost two years ago with recipes, but had stopped using it. I'm working on compiling all my various recipes into one organized location. I don't know what gave me the energy to do this on a random Saturday night, but here I am.

I have an urge to purge the pantry and freezer too, since they're cluttered and jammed full of half-empty boxes. But I should probably get to the pile of dirty dishes and the random clutter around the apartment first. Maybe with a heavy dose of caffeine tomorrow morning ;)

American Day

American Day is a big festival the Americans here in Misawa throw for the Japanese. All the groups and clubs on base can buy tables and sell their food, raising money for whatever they need. There's a parade and lots of fried and sugary foods. Japanese don't use sugar nearly as much as we do, so they love anything sweet.

Jeff was working two booths this year - our command's FRG (Family Readiness Group) and his Second Class Petty Officers Association. I'm never able to go to FRG meetings because I work, but said I'd be willing to help as needed.

Jeff got there at around 6am. I, the non-morning person, arrived around 9am. All the tables were set up right outside the main gate. I tracked him down at the Second Class booth, so I hung around and chit chatted. I said I'd be more than happy to help them (the FRG had more hands available anyways) so I dug right in. Jeff left to work at the FRG booth while I assembled dozens of philly cheese steak sandwiches.

We got into a decent routine. The guys took care of grilling and taking orders.

And I assembled. Jeff tried to help me out when he came back from the other booth, but by that time I was in a groove and he was just getting in my way. I pushed him over to taking orders. That's him on the right.

It was surprisingly a lot of fun. I saw a lot of friends stop by and our booth was nonstop. The boys did good - the booth caught everyone's eye and had people coming for a closer look. They made a huge profit, and sold out of Philly cheese steak.

This year each booth had a state and had to base its theme on the state's movies. I wish I'd taken pictures because some were pretty good. But when I took a break, I was just hungry! I loved Illinois - it had Wayne's World! The FRG had Maine, so they served fish and chips. The Enlisted Spouses Club had some delicious funnel cake, their movie was Dirty Dancing -- is that Virginia?? This booth was obviously Philadelphia - hence the Rocky theme. They even had music playing.  I told Jeff their planning and prep definitely helped. A lot of the booths just had a poster or two and really didn't stand out in the crowd. This one did.

Maybe next year I'll get some pictures of the other booths!

Growing a Green Thumb

I'm working on my green thumb.  It's a serious work in progress. I have a couple of problems - I water the plants to death or I forget to water them for weeks. Apparently neither is good for growth.

Here's my porch three or four weeks ago when my parents were here. My mom helped me pick out the flowers!

You can see a hint of yellow in a blue pot above. I separated three flowers from one pot to three and it's a good thing I did because they're growing like weeds. Those yellow flowers - that's the same pot as above where all three used to fit. I have no idea what flowers these are, but they were each 100-200 yen.

I stuck to cheap flowers so if I killed them I wouldn't be heartbroken, but they're pretty too.

My basil starter kit grew like crazy last year until I transplanted it to another pot. I'm trying again this year, and I'll probably just leave them be! 

I love these tall purple ones.

I wish I knew names, but everything was in Japanese. And it was a super overcast weekend, so no sunshine to work with here. These flowers are a really vibrant purple but you can't really tell...

These little spiky things are trying to die on me. I don't know if they'll make it. I'm trying to water them less, maybe they're not as thirsty? I don't have a clue, ha.

I love desert plants, no water is okay! I had a cactus in the kitchen for a while but got too zealous with the water and drowned him. These are his replacement.

My little patio garden has also made a little friend - a spider! I don't really mind, his spiderweb is huge and I'm hoping it'll help catch some of the bugs that like to poke through our screen doors. Since the bugs are coming out like crazy right now, I'm leaving the spider be.

This is the closest I can get you... any closer and he scurried away. I was also grilling hot dogs, and I was hungry. And Jeff took this oppurtunity to close and lock the glass doors, so I had to negotiate my way back inside :)

I think the cool air and humidity is helping everything grow. I'm hoping the hot hot hot weather coming in late July doesn't scorch all the plants! Here's to  hoping I can keep them alive all summer and kill my husband's "plant killer" comments for a while.