charlatan psychic

Yes, it deserves 2 exclamation marks. I love Halloween. I always have. I think it's because I like dressing up in costumes. Sure, I like candy, especially chocolate, but I think it was always more about the costumes for me. However, I find myself getting lazy. As I sit here handing out candy, I'm wearing the same clothes I wore to run errands this afternoon, with the addition of my adorable spider hat. I didn't feel like bothering with the whole costume thing. I thought about just putting on my star trek dress, but that was a little warm. So I'm sitting at my dining room table, blogging, facebooking, google+ing, and drinking beer. Yes, beer. I have the Ghost Hunters live episode playing on the TV in the other room even though I can't see it from the table. I have Remy at my feet waiting for the time when I let him outside to see the kids. Duke is doing his own thing. He watched the action for a couple minutes and decided it didn't suit him. He seems to pre...

I made a decision this morning. I changed my weight tracking day to Friday. I weighed myself Thursday or Friday morning and was down to 157. My Sundays tend to be either early or late. I'm either getting up early to do something, or sleeping in. It's been rather inconsistent lately. And I tend to do my splurging over the weekend and eat better during the week. If we eat out, it's usually Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I also noticed the past couple weeks that I'm not using a lot of my weekly points all the time. So if my week starts on Friday, I can use weekly points, and then think about earning them back with activity points for the rest of the week. I think this will help me focus a little more and keep losing weight. I also need to get started on strength training. I will have a lot of time on my own this week. I might get out my circuit routine I did 2 years ago and start doing that 3 days a week. I'm thinking do ST on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and pure card...

No, not me. Sorry, big sister. I can't believe I haven't blogged about this yet. I'm going to be a godmom! My BFF Misty is pregnant with her first kid. Holy Crap! Misty's gonna have the bebes! Sorry. Anyway, She is pregnant, and I am super excited. Seriously, this is more excited than I would be for my own kid. Probably because I am not interested in having one, but anyway. It's still the first trimester, so don't know gender. I need to ask if they are going to even find out! Oh my goodness. I will be making a baby quilt. They already have names picked out. I'm getting either a Damien or a Sophie. Part of what excites me about this, is I can buy the kind of baby things I always think are so cool and funny, but that others just wouldn't get. Like punk baby things, and rocker baby things, and goth baby things. And the parents will actually put it on the baby! I'm still somewhat in shock thinking about my best friend having a baby. I do wish I w...

Time for another peek into the life of me. I often speak in random accents. English, Australian, Scottish, Ghetto, Jamaican (not a good one), and various weird voices push their way into my speech. J will tell you all about it. He calls me his personal sound board and constantly tells me I should do voices for cartoons. Usually, the accents are totally random. I don't know when or why they pop up. It will be in regular conversation, or a comment I make. J is very entertained by all of this. Please understand that any labels I assign here are the stereotypes and not what I think of the actual people. Big Black Guy White Trash Barbie Cockney Snobby British Scottish weirdo Scottish Irish Australian Black Southern Old Man Black Woman Valley Girl Olive Oil (yes, Popeye's girl) Minnesotan and various others When I hear an accent of any kind, I have a tendency to pick it up. I try very hard to not mimic an accent when the person with said accent is present. It...

Had an awesome run this morning. It was definitely chilly to start, but I warmed up quickly. Went with the tank and arm warmers, and I'm glad I did. Felt great, except for a runny nose. Stupid allergies. Finished in 2 hours, 19 minutes, 32 seconds. Hells yeah! That's 10 minutes faster than my training run! What little hillage (yes, I made up that word) there was felt easy after training on Haan bridge. I was very happy and finished with a strong sprint. J on the other hand, not so lucky. He said he was doing great and set to finish with a Personal Record, but then his left knee started to hurt. Turns out he irritated his  Iliotibial band  (IT band), and we think it's because he didn't do as much training as he wanted to. So his time was very slow for him. And painful. Yet he finished, and managed to walk back to the hotel with me. We did stop at the med tent where they wrapped it and put ice on it. We stopped for lunch on the way back to the room, at the same bar ...

I'm in a hotel room with a comfy bed and fake fireplace on which the heater doesn't work (still have the regular AC unit). Had a great lunch at a fun little bar and a lovely Italian dinner complete with tiramisu for dessert. Got my race bib pinned on and my stuff all laid out for tomorrow. Have the bag we're taking with us (to leave at the bag drop) packed and marked with our name. We even picked up some bagels to have for breakfast and I prepped the little coffee pot so we just have to turn it on. We'll get up around 0500 tomorrow to eat, take a hot shower (mostly for J's cold), and get dressed. A little before 6 we will walk over to the start/finish. We walked it earlier to pick up our race packet. Just 5 blocks east and 2 blocks north. I bought a Bondi Band  headband at the pathetic expo. It's burgundy and says, "You don't smell like a princess anymore!" J's race leaves at 0700. I'll get his warm-ups and put them in the bag. Then I...

Did our 50K bike ride (31 miles) this morning in 2 hours 11 minutes. J would have been much faster, but he went at my pace. The ride supports the  El Paso Holocaust Museum , which of course is a cause dear to my heart. It felt pretty good out there, but damn, my butt hurts. I have chafe in a bad spot. But it was nice to get out and ride. Definitely need to do that more often. I do have some plans to take a spin class at least once a week with a friend, but I won't start till after the half marathon. Which is next week, by the way! One week away! I think today was a good prep. I did an endurance exercise by didn't run. So, my weigh-in was today. I maintained, which is in line with what I expected. I knew that not meeting my minimum points 2 days in a row was not good for me. But I didn't gain, and I will learn from this and try to plan ahead more. Not giving up that easily! Aaaaaaand yeah. That's all I got.

I didn't messed up a little on the diet this week. No, I didn't go over my points. I went under. Two days in a row, I didn't hit my daily minimum. First was Thursday, and I was nervous which killed my appetite. Then Friday, we ate out, and I thought the pizza would be much higher in points than it really was, but didn't enter it till this morning. If I had known that, I would have had dessert! I did eat a good helping of fruit yesterday, which is 0 points, but helped fill me up. When I started the sparkpeople plan previously, I found out that I wasn't eating enough some days. I would just have days where I wasn't hungry, sometimes for no reason at all. I would eat a little and be full. Back in high school and college, I would forget to eat. Nothing intentional, just literally forget to stop and get some food. My body doesn't always tell me that it's hungry. I've had to learn to schedule my meals so that I eat. It's not nearly as bad as it use...

Apparently, Westboro Baptist Church is protesting a funeral here in El Paso, TX tomorrow, for a Marine who died in Afghanistan. Having lived in KS, I saw, read, and heard tons about Westboro. That whole group is a train wreck. Unfortunately, it's the kind you find it hard to look away from. J and I have both been protested, in a way. A guy I went to college with, my piano teacher's son, actually grew up in Topeka, KS, close to the Westboro church. I remember him telling us once about their weekly protests right on their church grounds. How he and his friends would tease them. They would politely offer a donut, and get hatred spewed at them. Of course, with Topeka being so close to Lawrence, KS (where we lived), they showed up a lot. If you are a hippy, pot-smoker, or otherwise non-conservative in KS, chances are you live in Lawrence. So needless to say, Westboro didn't like a lot of stuff that happened in our town. They came to protest some event on the KU campus once...

Well, for me anyway. I just did the Transmountain Challenge 5K in 27 minutes and 46.7 seconds. ho-ly crap That beats my previous best by 3 whole minutes. It means I ran a sub 10min mile. In fact, it would be a 9:15 and some change. I saw someone I've met before, before we got started. She's a spin class instructor, personal trainer I think, and super fit. I knew she and her friend were trying to finish under 30 minutes, so I paced off them on the way out. We went 1.5 miles uphill. I pushed myself pretty hard to keep pace with them. At the turn around, I let myself fly down the hill. They both finished before me, but not by too much. It was an awesome run. J also had a great run. Best time for transmountain for him. And transmountain is it's own level of race, because the first half is all uphill. So great day for both of us. Next year, I'll do the mountain. If we're still here that is. 

What? A day early? What in the world is wrong with me? I decided to weigh in today instead of tomorrow. We'll be up earlier than usual tomorrow for the Transmountain Challenge. I have to take J to the start on the westside and then get myself to the finish on the eastside, without taking the transmountain shortcut. And I don't do early mornings that well. Plus, today is Yom Kippur . Now, I have never fully practiced Judaism, but a few years ago, I read up on the High Holy  Days and J and I decided it fit where we were in our lives at that moment - starting a new year, trying to put the past behind us and moving on with a clean slate. Yom Kippur calls for a fast. I mean a full fast, with just sips of water to get by if you need that. Of course, if there is any medical reason for you to not fast, don't fast. The first year, we didn't do a full fast. We each had a natural fruit juice to drink and drank water. The next 2 times we would have some water, but that was it...

Lost another 1.5 pounds on weigh in today. That puts me at 161 with 7 pounds lost. I'm going to be careful this week and try to eat better than last week so I can get under 160 next Sunday. That would put me at my first goal of 5% of my starting weight, and also put me just barely lower than I got with Sparkpeople. Did another 13 mile run this morning. About the same time as last week, but without the foot pain. I did have some odd pain in the big join of my big toe for a little bit, but I walked a minute and stretched my foot and it went away. That was at mile 2. At the same spot on the way back, mile 11, I had some ankle pain and had to walk that out. It was very slow the last 2 miles home. But finishing without that foot pain felt great. And it took me longer to hit the proverbial runner's wall this time. After a nice shower, J and I rode our bikes to the PX for some lunch. It's only 1.5 miles from our house, and we can take a smaller street with less traffic, so we ...