Another Monday lies ahead...

Last week was such an unbelievably stressful week at work that I still don't feel "refreshed" after the weekend. I need like a full week off.

I'll try to keep the work stuff short so as not to bore everyone. We had a 10-hour production shoot on Friday and as you can imagine, I had a LOT of prep work to do in the days ahead of it. The day of the shoot, I was so worried about things not getting done that I felt nauseous the entire time. Most of the shoot went alright until we got to our 3rd anchor, who was new. The guy has a lot of experience doing sports for news stations, but most sports guys aren't really reading from the teleprompter, they're just talking. This guy was messing up every other word. We only had the studio rented till 5 p.m., and time was running out fast.

There was no way we could use the video with this guy. A co-worker and I went to our boss and had her watch what was going on to convince her this was no good. I then asked her to put me on instead. She paused a minute then said "Go into makeup now."

What? Really?

I've been dying to be one of our anchors but this isn't really the type of environment you want to make your debut in. The whole crew was on edge and P.O.'d. I was determined anyway. Right as my makeup was finished and I was about to step on set...our CEO said we're ending for the day and will retape next week because it will cost more to pay the crew overtime than to reshoot.

Damn it.

I was SO CLOSE!!!! The fact that they agreed to put me on instead is a huge promising sign though! I was so exhausted after that day that I went to bed at 9:30. Plus, now I have the stress of having to get this reshoot together some time this week.

Almost forgot to mention, my brother was our intern-for-the-day. He wants to go into production too. He did a really great job, I was so proud of him! He will get to intern at my work this summer.

Somehow, I managed to work out 4 times last week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Swam on Monday and Wednesday. I went to the gym tonight and did some weights for my arms and an hour of cardio. I'm sure my heart was appreciative to that after all the stress I've been putting on it! Going to try and swim tomorrow.

Well, that's all folks.

Spring, now please.

I really don't know how much more of winter I can take, seriously. I'm tired of being cold. I'm tired of wearing dress pants to work (I miss skirts and dresses!). I'm tired of snow. I'm tired of gray skies. Sick of it all! And I really cannot wait to start biking and running outdoors again.

Thankfully, I have some fun trips ahead of me in the coming months and 2 are at warm places!

March 13-18: San Diego! I'm not sure how fun this will be because it's for work. But we do have all day Saturday and Sunday to enjoy ourselves, as the conference we are exhibiting at doesn't start till Monday afternoon. And hey, free trip = sweetness...

April 21-24: Ft. Myers, Florida! I'm going there with my Aunt Sandy. She is being super awesome and paying for my plane ticket. I just have to split the hotel room with her! We're just getting away for a few days and laying on the beach all day and going out all night.

May 21-23: CEDAR POINT! Robin planned this trip for her and Mike and Nels and I. I'm so excited! Nels and I have been dying to go to Cedar Point for awhile now and Robin booked us a really awesome deal for 4 people. We're staying at the on-site resort and going to the park Friday night with a "twilight pass" that only costs $15 since we're staying at the resort. Then more of the park all day Saturday! Woo hoo! Overall the whole weekend is going to cost little over $100 per person - awesome price!

The CA and FL trips are helping me stay focused on my workouts during this cold winter weather.

Today I finally decided to just bring my Foreman grill to work. You just cannot cook a turkey burger the night before and microwave it the next day. Gross. It seemed weird to bring the whole thing to work at first, but it was totally worth it! My lunch was delicious. See, I love cheeseburgers, and so this is a good way to distract me from hitting up some fast food place for lunch. Glad we have a nice sized kitchen space at the studio.

For my workout tonight, I focused on a treadmill interval workout since my muscles are pretty worn out from weightlifting in my class yesterday. I've posted this workout from Fitness magazine before, but here it is again (sorry for the formatting):

MINUTES SPEED INCLINE PLAN

2 4.0 mph 0-2 Warm-up

5 4.5-6.0 0-2 Increase speed by 0.5 mph each minute until you reach

6.0 mph; maintain for 2 minutes.

7 4.0-4.5 2-10.0 Increase incline by 2.0 each minute until you reach

10.0; stay there for 3 minutes.

1 6.0 mph 2.0 Descend

4 Varied 2.0 Sprint (your best effort) for 1 min., then jog (4.5 mph);

repeat combo, trying to sprint faster second time.

1 5.0-6.0 4.0 Climb

4 6.0-7.0 4.0

1 4.0-4.5 0 Recover

1 5.0-6.0 0 Jog

2 Sprint 0 Best effort

2 2.0-3.0 0 Cooldown

I actually felt pretty good after this. My legs were really aching between all the squats yesterday and this run; but cardio-wise, I felt great. I'm glad to know I've really built up my endurance in that area : )

I'm still toying with the idea of a half-marathon this summer...but I'm really scared...my last issue of Fitness magazine provided an 8 week training plan for a half-marathon that seems pretty doable. Hmmm...we shall see!

Crazy double workout day!

WHEW! I'm spent. I went and swam 10 full laps this morning (slowly, mind you!), went to my hour boot camp class this evening, and then 25 minutes on the cross ramp after that.

I felt a lot more into my swim this morning. Cardio-wise, I felt fine. It's my form that's bugging me and really slowing me down. I spent 1/2 a lap just practicing on my kicking, because it seemed like I was using my arms too much. This may be something that gets better with time though as I build up my endurance. When I started running for the first time a few years ago, I remember I could barely get around the block. It's just something that you have to build up to.

The boot camp instructor was killer today! We spent nearly the first 20 minutes on squats and lunges alone! I thought I was going to pass out. I was proud of myself for making it through the whole class because we did a lot of different strength training exercises.

Even though I was feeling pretty worn out, I did the cross ramp after class because I was also feeling guilty thanks to these guys...

Lindt Dark Chocolate Raspberry Truffles! My mom gave me a bag for Valentine's Day. They are so smooth and creamy and just melt in your mouth. I keep them in my desk at work with the intention of having just one after my lunch as an indulgence. Today, however, I had a whole serving size - 3 pieces - which are 220 calories and 18 grams of fat. Whoops. So I made sure to burn at least that many calories on the machine to make up for it.

My schedule was kind of crazy today and I didn't do any grocery shopping over the weekend, so I just got a Subway turkey footlong and ate half for lunch and the other half for dinner while driving to the eye doctor. I was surprised to find out my contact prescription really didn't change very much. But since my contacts are 3 years old, I'm getting new ones anyway. The left eye has worsened some.

I also asked her about why my right lower eyelid has been twitching a lot lately - almost every day. She said stress, lack of sleep, and caffeine may cause this, but it's nothing to worry about, it's just an annoyance. Lucky me I am prone to all 3 of these things...

Well between waking up early to swim and doing such a hard workout this evening, I'm exhausted and going to bed early!!! Night!

2 pounds down!

Man it's so hard to make time for this blogging thing! Warning: this is going to be a random and photo-less blog! I have too much to do tonight!

My weigh-in last week says I'm down 2 pounds. Hooray! I had some really good workouts last week.

I need some good protein-packed vegetarian recipes for a picky eater. Lent is here, and so I can't eat meat on Fridays. Cheese pizza every Friday is not a good option, so I need some help! Also, I gave up French fries for Lent. I didn't think this would be a big deal because I don't feel like I eat them very much. But this past weekend, it seemed like I was faced with French fries every meal! Somehow, I abstained!

I spent this past weekend in the Quad Cities with Nels. He has his mom's house all to himself since she lives with her new husband and she is trying to sell the house. Of course, there was absolutely no food in the house because Nels doesn't cook anything for himself. So we ate out a lot this weekend - yummy sandwiches from Hungry Hobo and we had some excellent Thai food Saturday night! I had chicken pad thai and it was delicious!

Normally, we are in Sycamore on the weekends because Nels signed his lease there before receiving a job offer in the QC a few months later. It is really going to suck when his lease is up this summer and we have to drive 2.5 hours to see each other...not looking forward to that at all. I can't wait until one of us finds a job close to one another.

I'm really excited because I FINALLY found an inexpensive, nice one piece swimsuit this weekend, so I can finally get going on swimming my laps at the gym and building up for the triathlon! It's solid black and was $35. After all the floral grandma prints I was running into for $60, it seemed like a great bargain!

Since I didn't get home from the QC till 5:45 and the gym closes at 8 on Sundays, I just did some cardio on the crossramp for 45 minutes. Ramp set at level 10, resistance set at 8, sometimes increased the ramp to 12. I plan on going to the gym to swim tomorrow morning! It's just waking up an hour earlier so not that big of a deal. I'm actually really looking forward to it!

Well, that's it for tonight! Laundry to put away and cleaning to be done!

Eggscellent!

I made my southwestern style Egg Beaters this morning on a piece of whole wheat toast with a slice of cheddar cheese. I mistakenly purchased sharp cheddar from the deli the other day, so I didn't really like it but I ate it all anyway. It definitely kept me WAY more full than my normal bowl of cereal. I felt much more satisfied and energized. Yay for eggs : )

Took that picture a little too close, looks like there's a TON of eggs there. Who's digging my 101 Dalmatians plate?! Haha, we have tons of dishes in my house that we never get rid of from when my brother and I were younger!

My healthy lunch was thwarted today by a production shoot at work. We were busy shooting all day and Pizza Hut was ordered for the whole crew. Now I know you should generally stay away from all pizza, but the good news with me is that I generally go for thin crust cheese pizza, which is about the lowest cal/fat you can do. So I had one large slice of thin cheese and then 2 breadsticks.

My dad was one of the "models/actors" for the stock footage we had to tape today. It was fun having him at my work all day! Also so did a friend Mike who I recently reconnected with. Here's some pictures from our shoot:

My dad being "managerial" lol

Handshaking it up

My mom made lasagna for dinner and I had one square, a dinner roll and some salad. My calorie counter says I was at 1,400 calories and 46 grams of fat today. That doesn't seem too bad. I tried to keep my portions reasonable.

Went to the gym and it was a lazier workout compared to yesterday. I just did 30 minutes on the cross ramp at an incline of 10, speed of 7. I went with Robin and her knee is bothering her (she played softball in high school) so she didn't want to be on the machine very long. I only burned about 300 calories at the gym, but there was so much running around at work during the shoot that I'm sure it helped me out some.

Really tired and it's time for bed! Goodnight!

Boot Camp, Baby!

After missing 3 classes, I was SO happy to get back into boot camp class at the gym tonight! The class is only on Monday nights and I missed 2 because of my back, then missed last week's because I had to be somewhere else. The class is an hour long and the instructor always has new moves for us. Class generally goes like this:

- 2 lap jog

- 2 laps worth of lunges (not fun! the first time I did this I thought I was going to fall over!)

- 4 minute cardio mix of high knees, football jog and jumping jacks

- Mix of squats, generally 2-3 different varieties (trust me, there are many variations and different moves you can add in to squats!)

- Sometimes pushes, lunges and planks

Then we break into smaller groups and rotate to different stations around the room. In groups we usually do tricep dips on benches, abs moves, bicep curls, shoulder raises, etc. We do the group rotation for about 30 minutes.

After class, I ran 2 miles on the treadmill. My time was 21:52 - not bad I thought, considering I just did an hour long class. I ran at a 2.0 incline with an average speed of 5.5 mph. My highest speed was 6.7 mph and that was to my favorite running song that really gets me in the zone - "Calabria" by Enur. I have no idea what the hell they're saying in this song, and as a result it took me forever to find it! If you don't know what it is, you'll probably recognize it when you hear it. It just has an AWESOME beat to run to! I love it!

I did a good job of logging my calories today on my Droid calorie counter. Grand total for the day comes to: 1,228 calories, 34.23 grams fat, 190.7 grams carbs and 49.43 grams of protein.

Foods:

Breakfast -

Kashi Heart to Heart cereal, Honey Oat

Fat free milk

Midmorning -

Quaker High Fiber cinnamon swirl oatmeal

Lunch -

Lean Cuisine five cheese rigatoni

Dinner -

Tyson breaded chicken patty on a hamburger bun

Post-workout -

1 tbsp reduced fat Jiff on whole wheat toast

My class had to burn around 400 calories and then I burned another 150-200 calories on the treadmill, so I probably burned half my calorie intake today. Am I consuming too low for being active?? Anyone know?? I'm not sure. Eating right can really be confusing sometimes. Take in too few calories, and you lower your metabolism which doesn't help you any.

I went grocery shopping after the gym, which I hate doing, but it had to be done. I got a pack of 4 turkey burger patties for $4.49 - which seemed like a lot at first, but then I realized it was about the same price as a McDouble but of course much healthier. Well...when you throw in the cost of the hamburger bun and a slice of cheese...maybe another dollar more. Still, not bad.

Also got some turkey lunchmeat from the deli. I got excited that Egg Beaters were on sale, 2 for $4, so I grabbed two Southwestern style cartons. I don't know why I've never tried the Southwestern style before, I love green and red peppers and onions in my eggs, so it should be delicious! I've been lazy and just going for cereal in the mornings so it will be good to make some eggs tomorrow morning = )

I've been meaning to go to Trader Joe's for some Greek yogurt and other things, but just haven't dragged myself over there. It's about 20 minutes away whereas Meijer is practically next to my gym. Stephanie told me back in January to get some Greek yogurt, and I still haven't tried it yet : 0 whoops!

Although my calories were good today, I don't really feel like I'm eating in a "balanced" way. I need more fresh fruits and vegetables, but I'm so lazy to buy and prepare them. Plus they always go bad before I get to them or get lost in my family's fridge.

Hopefully this post wasn't boring to read. I feel like it was only interesting for me. Ha.

Forward, Together Forward

Hmmm...where to begin...

For starters, I have to be honest here: I've been pretty lazy the last week with my eating. Quite frankly, I just haven't cared. There's been too much going on; too much stress with my job and then knowing the two year anniversary of what happened at NIU would soon be here.

I did, however, keep up with my exercise. I went to the gym 4 times last week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Hopefully that helps balance out how the week went. My brother's birthday on Wednesday also brought a tasty bison burger from Ted's Montana Grill and some ice cream cake into the mix.

Nels and I mostly celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday. Valentine's Day will never have the same meaning for me after what happened at NIU. We went and had a nice dinner at Italian restaurant Villa Verone in Sycamore. Dipping bread in oil & cheese is my favorite = ) haha. Here we are at our table...I love how the only thing you see is the rose on our table!

Funny thing about the rose - there was a middle-aged couple at the table next to us who left when we were about halfway finished eating. I watched the man stand up and pick up the plastic bag containing their leftovers. Then he glanced over his shoulder, plucked the rose out of its vase, and put it in the take home bag as well. Really??? You really needed to take that rose with you??? People are so weird, honestly!

When it comes to food, Nels and I are polar opposites. I stick with plain ("boring" as Nels likes to call them, haha) choices - chicken tenders, cheeseburgers, spaghetti or ravioli. Nels orders the most "interesting" food he can find on the menu. Take a look at what he ordered - now the photo is kind of dark, but look closely...mixed in with the linguini...

That would be octopus tentacles. Nels ordered a pasta dish with clams, shrimp, octopus, and calamari. GROSS!!! On dessert we are much more agreeable. We shared a yummy cannoli.

My claddaugh ring has been missing for about 3 weeks now, and Nels knows it's been really bothering me because I wear it every day. For Valentine's Day, he bought me a new one. Unfortunately for Nels, I happened to find my ring in my bedroom the very same day he bought the new one : ) sorry sweetie! So he returned it. He says he'll give me a gift next week but I said I didn't want one and our dinner was plenty.

From there, I have no idea on how to transition to today's stuff so I'm just going to dive right in.

I'm not sure if I will attend the memorial every year as time goes on, but as of right now, I feel like I will want to. Tonight I definitely felt like it was where I needed to be.

That's the back of my free shirt from NIU's Office of Support & Advocacy, the office created exclusively for the students who were in Geology 104 (the class the gunman walked into. My class, in case you're clueless).

Turnout for the memorial was less than last year, which is to be expected. Everyone makes a big deal about the first year. I understand that many are just trying to move on. What upset me, however, was some people's behavior at the candlelight vigil I went to. Some groups of people were telling obnoxious stories and laughing before

the vigil started, and I could tell it was mostly freshman/sophomores who were not at NIU when everything happened. I'm not saying everyone should be standing there crying, but the behavior was really inappropriate to me.

This was also my first time seeing the permanent memorial - the 5 walls, each bearing a name of one of the fallen - and the sculpture. As soon as I walked up to the walls and saw all of the flowers and cards, I started crying. It was the first time everything hit me since the memorial last year. It was also my first time standing next to Cole Hall since the memorial last year. It is still incomprehensible to me that this terrible event happened in a class I sat in. I'm thankful for all of the kind Facebook comments, messages, texts, and phone calls I received today. I cannot stop thinking about the families of Gayle, Daniel, Julianna, Catalina and Ryanne. I wish I had the transcript of President Peters' speech, because I thought it was wonderful how he talked about the spirit of each of the fallen.

Tomorrow is Monday, and I have to get back on track and keep moving forward.

Always in our hearts ~ February 14, 2008

Oh hello, Droid.

A few weeks ago my company gave me a Droid as my work phone. Yes, be jealous. : ) When the volume is on and I get a text or an e-mail, the phone says, "DROID." And like a total nerd, each time it does that I say back to it, "Oh hello, Droid!" haha. My boyfriend makes fun of me for that.

So anyway, Droid has an awesome (free) application called Calorie Counter. It has tons of foods and their nutritional content loaded in it, including restaurants and even supermarket brands, like Jewel and Wal-Mart. The other awesome part is since the Droid scans barcodes, you can scan the barcode of any food and it will pull up the nutritional information!

The last couple weeks I've been really slacking on tracking what I'm eating. I feel I haven't oversplurged on anything and have been doing a good job. But I should track for a couple days just to make sure. I'll post all my totals later.

One thing I hate about counting is trying to guess how many ounces of lunch meat are on my sandwich or how big my piece of chicken is. Anyone have some good suggestions there?

I went to the gym around 4 p.m. on Sunday, before the Super Bowl - which I don't even really care about anyway, but my mom was making meatloaf that night and I wanted to work out before eating that! Of course, the gym was deserted, which is my favorite time to be there. I spent 35 minutes on the Crossramp machine between a resistance of 8 and 12 (went back and forth) and then ran a mile on a 2.5% incline, which felt good. I'm glad I didn't have any Super Bowl parties to be around with tempting junk food. Since my boyfriend lives in the Quad Cities, I couldn't go with him to his friend's party. He made his yummy Velveeta cheese nacho dip. Glad I wasn't around it, haha!

Then last night Robin and I did the Crossramp for an hour, alternating between resistance of 8 and 10 and an incline of 8 and 10. Burned over 600 calories! Going again tonight but not sure what I'll be doing. I need to focus on some weightlifting today.

Lunges & Layoffs

Lots to blog about today!

I took a rest day from the gym Wednesday for two reasons:

1. My body was feeling pretty tired from my double workout (swimming in the a.m., workout in the p.m.) on Tuesday.
2. I had to make 3 calls that had me on hold for nearly 2 hours: 25 minutes with Comcast, 18 minutes with Linksys, and then a grand 52 minutes with Comcast again. By then it was 10 p.m. and I was pissed off and tired!

Our router or something is totally messed up in the house...4 days without Internet now. I am leeching off of the neighbor's connection right now.

A lot of people were let go at the studio my company rents from today. This doesn't affect my company at all; we just pay them rent to use office space and the studio, so we are not affiliated with/linked to them. But I've worked alongside these people and I of course felt really bad for them. The atmosphere was very depressing. It made me realize how thankful I am to have my job and to know our company is actually growing right now. My thoughts and prayers go out to all the people having to deal with being unemployed. I hope things turn around soon.

Yesterday, a friend of mine shared her blog with me and I ended up reading every entry back to the first one. I met Morgan when I interned at WIFR and she was the evening producer there. She was an awesome mentor and helped me improve my broadcast writing, more than she realizes probably! : ) I absolutely love her blog I want mine to be more like it. I like how she shares what's going on in her life in addition to food and fitness, and includes a LOT of photos as well - and recipes! I recommend reading it!

Tonight I went to a class at the gym to mix things up, "Body Works Plus Abs." I don't go to this class much because I like Boot Camp on Mondays a lot better, but I missed this week's. I hate the first 5 minutes of this class, because the "warm up" is step aerobics, which I think are so lame. I hate them. First of all, I don't feel ANYTHING when I do them. My heart rate probably increases by 1. I feel like I'm 60 years old doing something really low impact, I can never coordinate the steps right, and I always look a dang foo'. Haha. OK done complaining about this small portion of the class!

The rest of the class is really great though. The reason I try to do one of these classes a week is because I can never get myself to do squats or lunges on my own, I always quit after 2. These classes force you to do them. The lunges always kill me. We also did a lot of arm and back work; my hands were hurting by the time I let go of my 5 pound dumbbells because we were gripping them for about 40 minutes. Oh, and we did WAY too may plie squats which are for your inner thighs. I could hardly get back up after awhile.

By the way, fellow bloggers...anyone know how to insert a photo exactly where you want it? When I click on the photo icon, it always inserts it at the top of the blog and I have to drag it alllllll the way down...very annoying.

Finally, I got a super cute workout top on sale at Kohl's this week, so I took a picture of it. OK, and maybe I want to show off my progress a bit too : )

Post-workout. L'il bit gross. Definitely have lost some inches around my waist. I measured this morning. I'd tell you how much I lost but that requires me digging my notebook out of my laptop bag and I don't quite feel like doing that right now! Today was my weigh in and my weight stayed the same. Not surprised since I couldn't workout last week. But glad no pounds gained and glad I got back on track this week.

Alright well that's plenty o' bloggin' tonight. Gotta get up for a workout in the a.m. since I go up to the boyfriend's place tomorrow after work.

Goodnight!

Back in the game!

I'm feeling much better now that I am back at the gym! What's even better is that my back doesn't hurt anymore either : )

My lunches are starting to bore me. I can't even finish my salad with chicken right now; it tastes awful to me. If I could afford it I'd eat Subway and Jimmy John's every day. I could just bring my own sandwich, but it's just not the same...I need some yummy and healthy new lunch suggestions, people! I'm actually considering bringing my Foreman grill to work and cook up some turkey burgers each day, hahaha! Would that be too weird? What do you think?

I've been easing back into my workouts this week to avoid hurting my back again. Sadly, this meant missing boot camp class again Monday night. Here's my workouts so far:

Sunday:

30 minutes on the Stairmaster, 15 minutes swimming laps

Monday:

Free range chest fly: 25 lbs, 2 sets of 12

Shoulder press: 20 lbs, 2 sets of 12

Incline press: 20 lbs, 2 sets of 12

Lat pulldown: 55 lbs, 2 sets of 12

20 minutes on the Stairmaster, again alternating between levels 6 and 8

Tuesday:

55 minutes of cross-training cardio! Woo hoo!

20 minutes on the Stairmaster (same alternating levels)

15 minute jog/walk on the treadmill with alternating incline

20 minutes on the crossramp machine with a resistance of 10-12

Tomorrow is my weigh-in day...nervous since I took a week off...we'll see!