Sorry it’s been a while since my last post…it’s been an insane couple of weeks.
Biggest news….we almost might have a house! We made an offer on a nice 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath townhouse in Lawrenceville and they have accepted :) For the next 3 days it’ll be in attorney review, during which either party can still back out of the deal, and then we’ll have to go through the inspection and mortgage application processes. But assuming everything goes smoothly, we’ll be closing on our new place on May 8th :) It’s so crazy that we might be owning our own home soon!! What I’d like to do on either here on Fuzzy Bunny or over at Drew’s Muy Caliente! is post before and after photos as we work on the place. So come middle of May, expect the blog to take on a home renovation feel. Sucks that we have to wait so long, we were hoping to be working on a house by April, so it would be all painted and stuff before we move in after the honeymoon. I guess we’ll have to paint fast!
That’s all for now, other stuff going on but I don’t have time now to write!
Ok, 2 days waking up and going strong! I did have to hit the snooze button once today, but we got up right after that at 6:39. I did about 45 minutes of DDR, while Drew hit the bike. I think it’s the first time I’ve really been breaking a sweat at the game. I literally had drops flying off my face near the end. Gross, but strangely satisfying. I decided to try the doubles mode for a while, and did that for about 15 minutes. Doubles is when you’re playing single player, but with 2 dance pads. It’s really tricking going from one pad to the next, and I never did better than a C on any song I tried, but it’s definitely some good cardio. After that I switched back to workout mode at the standard level. It’s kinda frustrating playing in game mode for any length of time b/c after you complete 3 songs, you “win” and have to go through entering your name for a high score and going through all the menus again, wasting those precious workout minutes. All in all, a really good workout for my first real exercise session with DDR. I’m lovin’ it!
As a side note, I also completed my 40 crunches for the day. Woot!
Yesterday’s recap (2/28):
We did tae bo for 30 minutes in the morning. I also did my 40 crunches in the evening. So far, on target for the week!
All right! I made my goal yesterday of running for 10 minutes straight! I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I’m pumped. We also got up on time and did some tae bo this morning and got to work on time :) A slight change to the recaps; I will no longer be including warm up and cool down time. It’s really just fooling myself that I’m doing more, so only true exercise will be documented from here on out. You can generally assume an additional 5 minutes warming up and 5 cooling down. Here’s the stats for yesterday:
2/27/06
Treadmill:
10 minutes at 4.0
Bike:
10 minutes at 75rpm at level 5 resistance
Upper Body (15 reps each):
curls: 10 lbs
reverse curls: 10 lbs
kickbacks: 10 lbs
sitting dumbbell press: 10 lbs
bench press: 30 lbs
Lower Body (15 reps each):
leg extensions: 40 lbs
leg curls: 40 lbs
outer and inner thigh raises
calf raises: 20 lbs
Abs:
lower: 10 reps
middle: 10 reps
left: 10 reps
right: 10 reps
Well, the exercise schedule is about to be thrown for a loop. First, I didn’t get to the gym on Friday b/c Drew wasn’t feeling well and I felt bad going without him and leaving him home sick. Second, we got to work late (again) today, due to our amazing inability to wake up in the morning. This got me thinking about how we’ve wanted to try exercising in the morning instead of after work, so we wouldn’t get home so late for dinner. Problem is, we can’t get up early to save our lives. After poking around the internet for a quick and easy solution, all I found was a whole lot of recommendations to stick to a regular sleeping schedule every single day, inculding weekends. A few people mentioned things like putting your alarm clock on the other side of the room, but I’ve done that and it only works for me for about a week until I start sleep walking to turn it off and going back to bed. I’ve never wanted to try a routine on the weekends, b/c I feel like that’s the one time I get to sleep in and relax. However, this past weekend kind of made me feel differently. I ended up lying around all morning on Sunday, and didn’t go to this play at my old college that I wanted to b/c I was too lazy and hadn’t even showered yet by 2pm. I suddenly realized I had wasted pretty much half the day doing nothing but sleeping and playing some video games, and as such missed out on an activity I really wanted to do. So maybe the weekend should be less about sleeping in, and more about making the most of the few hours there are in the day.
Where is this all going and what does it have to do with exercising? Well I decided (with Drew’s agreement) that we’ll try a new schedule of getting up early every morning, and only giving ourselves 1 extra hour sleeping in on the weekends. Here’s what we came up with:
Weekdays (except Friday, where we’re up till 11:30)
6:30-7:30: wake up and exercise
7:30-8:00: shower, get dressed
8:00-8:30: breakfast, brush teeth
8:30-9:00: warm up car and go to work
9:00-12:00: morning work
12:00-1:00: lunch
1:00-6:00: afternoon work
6:00-7:00: go home, cook dinner
7:00-8:00: eat dinner
8:00-10:00: chill out, do whatever
10:00-10:30: get ready for bed
Weekends (except going to bed at 10:30 Sunday):
7:30-8:30: wake up and exercise
8:30-9:00: shower, get dressed
9:00-10:00: breakfast, brush teeth
10:00-5:00: whatever plans for the day, fit lunch in somewhere
5:00-6:00: cook dinner
6:00-7:00: eat dinner
7:00-11:00: whatever plans for the evening
11:00-11:30: get ready for bed
Anyone else have any handy-dandy tips for waking up, working out, eating breakfast, and getting to work on time?
OK, 2/22 exercise stats:
Treadmill 15 minutes: (for the first time, I hit my goal of running for at least 10 of the 15 minutes!)
2 minutes: warmup at 3.5
5.5 minutes: jog at 4.5
1 minute: rest at 3.5
3 minutes: jog at 4.0
1.5 minutes: rest at 3.0
2 minutes: jog at 4.0
Upper Body: 15 reps each except abs
30 lbs bench press
50 lbs shoulder pull-down bar thing, not sure what it’s called
10 lbs bicep curls
10 lbs reverse curls (palm down)
40 crunches (10 middle and each side, 10 lower ab crunches bringing legs toward chest)
Bike: 10 minutes
8 minutes easy pace, kept it around 75 rpm
2 minutes cool down, real slow at 50 rpm
Recap time:
Elliptical cross trainer thingy: 15 minutes on level 5 on random program. Sooo hard! 140 calories burned. I found I had to go slow to keep my heart rate from going ballistic. This thing has the heart moniters built into the arm pole things. I was going up around 200 bpm, which is definitely too high. On the little heart rate chart, for my age, a cardio workout should be around 170 bpm, and a fat burning workout around 130 bpm. I’m even more out of shape than I thought! After I saw it was around 200, I pulled back and went slower, trying to keep the rate below 170. At first I thought maybe the machine was off, but when I stopped and checked my pulse the old fashioned way, it was indeed beating around 3+ beats every second. Whoa! Going forwards and backwards was another challenge on this. According to the machine, going backwards should work your quads and calves, while forwards works hams, glutes, and something else I forget. But it seemed to me like my quads were the only thing really feeling the burn in either direction. So I’m not sure if I was doing it wrong somehow, or my quads are just weaker than everything else. It might also be b/c I did cardio last this time, and maybe my quads were still sore from the leg extensions or something.
Strength: Lower Body: higher weights for the extensions and curls than last time. Yay!
15 reps each:
Leg extensions: 30 lbs
Leg curls: 30 lbs
calf raises
Outer leg lifts
Inner leg lifts
Lunges (15 reps each side)
30 crunches (10 each center and each side)
EDIT: an additional 10 crunches for lower abs, bringing legs towards chest)
Drew and I went to visit my friend Mindi from back home in Parsippany on Sunday, and we had the pleasure of meeting her new German Shepherd, Major. I should start by mentioning that she already has another, older German Shepherd named Emma who’s a real sweetheart and very well trained. Major is only a year old, and hasn’t been well trained in his previous homes. He’s very sweet, but high strung and loves to jump on people and furniture. With such a large dog, this can be a dangerous situation. The majority of the time people were at the house (5 of us in all), Major was barking and jumping and generally demanding attention. It didn’t help that there was one person slightly afraid of him, which if you know anything about dogs you know makes it worse.
It wasn’t until after a couple of people left that Drew and I got to see some dog training in action. Once there were less people around, he calmed down a bit, and I think he was happy to get more attention. It’s amazing, Major will obey pretty much any command given as long as you are holding his ball. But if you’re trying to command him empty handed, forget it. He acts like he’s never heard the words “sit,” or “down” in his life. We figured out that he’s a pretty smart dog, and he likes to be the one in control, which of course is a big no-no. We also figured out that we like dogs and wish we could get one. With both of us working full time, though, that’s just not possible. We would never be able to put in the training and effort that a dog needs and the attention he/she deserves. It sucks, because I’ve always loved German Shepherds, and this just reaffirmed my desire to raise one. When we decide to have kids, I’ll probably be home, but then of course I’ll have kids to worry about and probably still no time for a dog. Anyone else have the experience of raising and training a puppy, or any ideas on how to make time for one?
OK, a little late but here’s the update:
Last Friday 2/17, we finally got to the gym after a few days of shoveling recovery. I can’t remember all the specifics perfectly since I’m so late reporting but here goes.
Treadmill: 15 minutes. I can’t remember the exact times and speeds, but they weren’t great. I walked more than I would have liked. I’m going to chalk it up to several days off, and try to improve tonight.
Upper body: Again, sorry I don’t remember all the specifics. I did everything for 15 reps, and all except free weights at 30 pounds. For the bicep curls and straight arm lifts, I stuck to the 8 pounds I used last time. I was happy enough with that portion of the workout.
I keep saying it, but hopefully I’ll start to remember to bring a little pad of paper with me so I can track more accurately. It’s a new week, and we’ll be hitting the gym today, Wednesday, and Friday, so wish me luck!
For Valentine’s Day, Drew and I went to The Melting Pot in Somerville, this unbelievably awesome restaurant. We got engaged at one down in Orlando, so I thought it would be nice to spend our last “single” V-day there. Evening started great, since we left work early. Even with 2 weeks notice, the best reservation I could get was for 4:45, unless we wanted to wait until 9:30. This turned out to be a good thing, since we were nearly the only people in the place and got to leave work nice and early. We ended up arriving at the place at like 4, so we settled into the bar to wait. The bartender was great, very nice and made a mean rum and coke. By the time we got to our table, I was feeling the alcohol and ready to dig into some tasty food.
They had a fixed menu for the holiday, starting off with a jumbo shrimp cocktail. Then it was time to dig into the fondue. Appetizer was a spinach/artichoke/swiss cheese dip, with tons of bread, apples, and veggies to dip. For those who haven’t been here, the food is all prepared right at your table in the fondue pot, so we got to watch her stir in all the fresh grated cheese and see it all melt into amazing fondue goodness. I was skeptical at first, since I’m not usually a fan of any of the ingredients, but it was fantastic. We didn’t quite manage to finish all of the dippings, but we came close. Next was a tasty salad with some kind of raspberry vinagrette (sp?) dressing and crumbled cheese on top.
Already stuffed, we settled down to the main course. We chose a Mojo broth for our food, which was this Caribbean thing with loads of garlic. While that bubbled in the pot between us, we got the awesomest plate of raw meat. Yay! Little skewer-sized pieces of lobster, scallops, ravioli, filet mignon, salmon and duck, along with a plate of vegetables with mushrooms, broccoli, squash, and potatoes. With the simple instructions that everything needs to be in the broth 1.5 minutes (except 2 minutes for the duck and filet mignon), we set to work skewering and cooking. They also brought us about 6 dipping sauces for after the pieces were cooked. My favorite was this gorgonzola cheese dip, which was amazingly delicious on the ravioli. Teriyaki dipped salmon was a close second, though.
We actually finished every single piece of food, and as we sat there stuffed to the gills, it was time to choose dessert. This was by far the toughest decision of the night, as choosing your favorite chocolate fondue is like choosing your favorite child. We ended up with a cookies and cream fondue, which had milk chocolate swirled with marshmallow and cookies. We then were given an awesome plate of things to dip: pound cake, strawberries, pineapple, banana, marshmallows, and cheesecake. The best was the oreo-crusted marshmallows, which were unbelievable in the hot chocolate goop, and about as close to heaven on earth as I’ve ever been. The waitress even brought us extras when we said how much we liked them. Again, we managed to finish everything. We even got a little split bottle of Rosa Regale, this beautiful strawberry sparkling champagne.
The Melting Pot is a fantastic restaurant, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Only caveat is the price, which is pretty steep. The holiday meal was $125 per couple (included the shrimp cocktail, salad, cheese dip, main dish, dessert, and champagne). The normal price for two is quite a bit less, although you’d have to check with the particular restaurant. Check ‘em out! It’s absolutely worth the price!
OK, time for the weekend update:
DDR: played about an hour (1/2 on light game mode, 1/2 on lesson mode)…light mode is a lot harder than beginner in workout mode. For those who are unfamiliar with DDR, the workout mode has 3 difficulty levels; beginner, workout, and standard. Game mode also has 3 levels: light, standard, and heavy. I naturally assumed that beginner mode with correspond with light mode, and so on up the ranks. However that’s not true. Who knows why, but the exercise mode is dumbed down a bit from the game. Looks like I have a lot of practice to go before moving up to standard!
The lesson mode is kinda cool. You have 3 lessons and 8 sections w/in each lesson. An example is shown on the left side of the screen, and the right side has a person doing the moves. Then you go through it twice, and if you do well enough you’ll be prompted to move to the next section. Section 8 of each lesson is like a cumulative test, when you go through the whole song (pieces of which you’ve done in previous sections) without the guide person. While a little boring in the beginning, it is really helpful to see how they suggest placing your feet for certain standard moves. I found some combinations of arrows are really simple once you see the dance pattern behind them. For anyone new, I suggest checking it out!
Non-DDR: Well the upside of shoveling a foot of snow on a huge driveway was the workout. We were out shoveling for about 2 hours yesterday, and I don’t think my heart rate was below 120 bpm the whole time. And check it out, on this calorie counting site, it says for my weight, shoveling snow for 2 hours equates to a whopping 762 calories burned. Holy Toledo! And for Drew, it says 1,442 calories for that same 2 hours! Now I don’t feel so bad about eating Olive Garden for dinner :) We probably still came out ahead!
The downside of course is that we’re sore as hell and it hurts to move. Rar!
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