Archive for the 'Blog Stuff' Category
July 8th, 2008 by Cynthia
OK... I'm not avoiding y'all... but the BIKE arrived yesterday!
Sitting at the computer writing a post vs. unpacking a BIG EXCITING BOX. Hmmm... the box won that battle handily. Can you blame me?
The bike, she is beautiful! Only the frame is clearly too large for me. I have not yet been successful getting on the bike. Well, I can, but only with the aid of my couch and only with the seat in the very lowest position, which probably would not be the ideal position for my legs to pedal in.
I have to take it to the bike shop anyway, as though I was able to successfully assemble most of the stuff that needed assembly with the included tools, I have not been able to connect the front brakes, a sort of essential item. So maybe they can teach me how to get on. More later... I took pix while I was unpacking.
Monday's weigh-in sucked. 230.6 pounds.
Exercise... well, I did two sessions on the Nordic Track Sunday, each lasting about fifteen minutes.
Yesterday, given I needed to stick around to receive the bike, I missed water aerobics. But I did get up early AM and skiied 20 minutes on the Nordic Track. All other exercise involved bike assembly and attempts to get on. So at least I'm starting to get back in a bit of an exercise groove. My feet hurt this morning, so I will have to ice tonight.
I had a smoothie this morning and am going to eat a Jack in the Box salad hubby brought me last night. Then it's bike shop errand time!
June 15th, 2008 by Cynthia
Well, sorry I haven't been around... our phone line went out Thursday. Called for repair immediately, set up appointment for Friday, sequestered the poor cats for hours and no one showed. Called... they said no repair order had been filed. Yeah, right.
Sigh. Set up another appointment and this time, got someone out Saturday. But for two days, no phone and therefore no internet since we are dial-up. Thank goodness for the Tracfone.
I felt rather stressed over it, since hubby was going out of town and the timing was bad. And I was stressed also because after my first session out hacking at bushes, my feet AND arms were pretty bad off. So no further gardening has gotten done and that too, is a stressor.
Anyway, I ended up waiting around for the phone guy for a long time Friday (had to miss water aerobics as my repair appointment window included that time) and got involved in watching the US Open Golf tournament. Riveting! Sitting with my feet up or on ice was good for them... but I got into an eating jag. Not a huge problem at first, because there wasn't anything junky in the house. But then, I got cravings for junk food and went and bought some. Chips, ice cream and a candy bar. All of which got eaten in a couple days. And I also overdid on dried fruits and nuts and cheese.
I was mostly back on track Sunday... but I'm not sure I want to weigh in and I may just skip it. I don't want to feel worse than I already do.
I got a lot of housework done today... but my feet are feeling it, even though much of it was actually done sitting... i.e. de-fuzzing all the assorted cat beds while I watched golf. That's a quite a job, actually, involving a lot of arm work to brush off the cat fuzz with my pet hair magnet and vacuum as needed. It's done for the present though.
May 25th, 2008 by Cynthia
I just got tagged by Christine Braun over at Iowa Avenue to play a blog game by creating a six word or less memoir. Mine's the title of this post and also the title of my member log over on the Precision Nutrition forums. These five words are what I try to keep in mind as I go about my daily life.
Naturally, sometimes when I look at cat fuzz on the carpet and decide I need to vacuum, I ignore these words and trot off to the pool instead!
Still, one of my worst habits is procrastination and it is a habit I fight every day on various fronts. And I've sure done my share of "I'll start a diet tomorrow." or "I'll eat better tomorrow." or "I'm going to eat what I want this week and come Monday, I'll change my lifestyle for the better." or even "It's the holidays... I'll eat what I want and go on a diet after New Years."
It's easy to put off life change. Life change is work and the vast majority of people, including me, naturally veer away from extra work. Hence the proliferation of quick fix diets and the taking of pills and meds to correct the ills caused by overeating and under-exercising. Yet... life change is also easy when taken a step at a time, a moment at a time. And we only have NOW to make that step. The past is done... the future may or may not be there for us. You never know what life will throw you. We assume we will always have that tomorrow, but that's not guaranteed.
I may lapse on occasion, I may... as I did last night, buy a dark chocolate bar and a small can of Wasabi fried peas and eat that INSTEAD of a healthy meal. (I stayed under maintenance calories though!) But I will make change for the better at my very next opportunity.
The past is the past. If you skipped your exercise session, if you ate fast food, whatever it was, you can't go back and undo it. So the only thing to do is realize that the time you have to change is NOW! Even if you only make one healthy decision today... that's OK. It's a foundation to be built on. It's all about choices. I made a poor choice last night... but I am making a better choice now. Keep moving forward, folks!
Back to the game... you are IT!
BlubberBeGone
Radical 180
VP Health & Fitness
Kathy Calculates: Weight Loss
All About Habits
However, I'm also going to add that as far as *I* am concerned, participation is entirely voluntary, it's an invitation and may be refused or ignored. My friends know me as sudden death on chain letters and chain emails! Play if you want to... and if not, that's OK.
Rules of play:
Write your own six word or less memoir...
post it on your blog...
Link to the person who tagged you...
Tag 5 or more bloggers...
Leave a comment on the tagged bloggers site with an invitation to play.
May 23rd, 2008 by Cynthia
It may have been caught by my Akismet spam trap. It doesn't catch legitimate comments very often, but once in a while it does and I have to de-spam them before they will appear. I do moderate new commentators.
May 21st, 2008 by Cynthia
It was a rainy and rather gloomy looking Tuesday morning and I was still feeling a bit beat up from my weekend trip as I sat down at my computer to lazily peruse my email. But then I spotted an email with a subject heading of ! "You won the Lipton bike!".
Now THAT got my attention!
Hi Cynthia,
You won the Lipton bike from my contest! Here's a link to my video revealing you as the winner: http://tinyurl.com/65jgtt
So, please get me your full name, shipping address, and I guess a shipping phone #, and I'll forward your info. onto Lipton.
Congratulations!
WOW! I let out an immediate WHOOP! Then ran to the bedroom to rouse hubby, who was sleeping late. This was BREAKING NEWS! Fortunately, my long suffering husband is used to my excitable outbursts.
I had entered a number of the Lipton Bike Giveaway blog contests. But I don't think I ever expected to really win. This is the biggest thing I've won ever! I spent chunks of yesterday chanting "BIKE, BIKE, BIKE!".
I won mine over at Everyday Goddess blog! You can even see a video of Liz drawing my name WHILE RIDING HER OWN BIKE! I can't imagine making a video while riding a bike, much less doing a contest drawing, but it's all there in the video, which is quite fun! I must say, Liz has been great... she's already forwarded my info to the Lipton contest representative and given me the contact info for same. I guess now I wait to hear from them. Or maybe the bike just arrives on my doorstep. I honestly don't know how these things work. I'll keep you posted!
Meanwhile, my husband started entering some of the blog giveaways as well! He even found a few new ones. I don't know if Lipton will give more than one to a household, but he didn't see any rules saying they wouldn't. Maybe if I get into riding, we'll have to look for a bike for him.
Speaking of which... I haven't ridden a real bicycle in about 30 years. I think I'm going to have to learn all over again! I actually looked up some reviews of the Fuji Crosstown 2.0 yesterday and they seemed favorable. And I found another, more detailed review here, again, sounds good. So with luck, it will be just the right bike for me. It will only be the third bicycle I've owned. My first one was small, red and with training wheels on. I actually ended up learning better without the training wheels. Later, as I grew, my parents got me a silver "English racer" style bike. I rode that one a lot.
I'm thinking that this will be a challenge... our streets here have some mondo potholes... and we have hills. Fairly steep hills. I live on one. I've never ridden on hills before AT ALL! So I did some Googling this morning and came up with a local bike club... and a bicycle safety site. I feel better already. When the bike arrives, help will be available.
May 8th, 2008 by Cynthia
Not me! I happened to regularly read John Is Fit a fellow bloggers journey from fat to fit and he gave away a free bicycle in this post! I didn't win that bike, sigh, but as he is not the only blogger giving out a bike, I'll keep trying! And I'll try to keep updating this page as I find contests. There is one catch... though fitness blogs are worldwide phenomenons, the bike contest itself is only open to United States residents.
And a nice bike it looks to be too! A Fuji Crosstown 2.0. The winner will also get some coupons for Lipton Tea and a $75 check towards professional bike assembly, in case you are not a do-it-your-self sort.
Apparently, Lipton is doing a whole contest thing to promote their new white iced tea. And part of it has been giving some lucky blog writers actual bikes to give away in exchange for promoting their contest. Well, I don't have a free bike to give out, but at least I can point you to where you can enter for one! And you might enjoy some blog reading expansion!
Honestly, I haven't myself used Lipton tea in a long while, but maybe I'll take a gander at their offerings next time I'm at the store. Certainly I have no objections to black tea, red tea, green tea or white tea. Count me in for herbal tea as well. Let's just say I'm a big tea drinker and leave it at that!
(Note... the new white tea offerings have not yet shown up at my Safeway as of May 12... but I'll keep an eye out.)
All aboard the bike contest express!
I think it's cool that Lipton is supporting the blog fitness/fat loss movement by doing this bike giveaway! Requirements for an entry differ from blog to blog, likewise for entry deadlines.
Head on over to these other fine blogs for more chances to win!
Scale Junkie
No More Fat Dad
She Just Walks Around With It
A Sizable Apple
Finding Flabuless and Downsize TV
InMyHeels
She Knows
Everyday Goddess
I know I wouldn't mind winning a bike! Riding it, after all these years of NOT riding might be interesting! Especially on our hilly street! Hope it has good brakes or I might entertain the neighbors by going SPLAT!
April 3rd, 2008 by Cynthia
I just added a new Wordpress plug-in called CommentLuv. If you check to enable it and leave a comment, it will go check your blog's feed, find your last blog post and link to it! Well, as long as you have entered your blog URL and it can parse the feed OK!
I've been seeing it on a few sites that I visit lately and I like the idea. It encourages comments, which I think make blogs more interesting and helpful. I certainly appreciate all your support! I also think it's a great way for you, my readers, to get to know one another a little better. And it's a nice reward for leaving a comment.
I am a little worried about this feature possibly attracting more spammers (yes, they HAVE finally found me), but so far, Akismet Spam seems to be doing a great job catching the spam so that it does not appear on my blog. If spam comments become a problem, I may not keep this plug-in.
Reminder to spammers... I've got the right to delete ANY comment if I feel that it is posted for the sole purpose of spamming some unsavory site!
Legit comments are always welcome!
Feel free to let me know what you think, good or bad!
