Lots of Walking This Month

Despite the rain, Shasta and I managed to get out walking as much as we could. I've taken to walking to whatever I can, which often include Whole Foods (when we don't have a large shopping list), the library, and the local market or restaurants. I'm not in the greatest shape yet, but I've worked up to over 2.5 miles per day on average this month (half of my long-term goal). Though, due to having so many days of rain, I had to do some of my miles indoors—doing Leslie Sansone Walk Away the Pounds exercise videos. Shasta has been my great walker buddy whenever we can make it outdoors.

While we were in Oregon last month, Jeff was given a new board game called Pandemic. It's a pretty cool game where all the players have to cooperate--because all the players win or lose together. Jeff is quite obsessed in figuring out the best way to "win" the game. He has played it a lot this month and has even dragged me into quite a few games. We really need to schedule a game night so he can drag some new folks into his obsession.

Our compulsion to watch every Netflix movie possible has finally eased. We still watch a lot of programs and movies, but we actually turn the TV off once in a while! We actually had District 9 for three days before we watched it!

Changing Our Unhealthy Habits

We continue with our efforts to change our lifestyle in an attempt to be healthier and lose weight. I continue to track all of my eating and exercise at the SparkPeople website. I make an effort to get out every day and go for a walk with Shasta. Though, with the weather this week, it was a challenge.

When I can't get outside, I have started doing exercise videos; my current favorite is the Leslie Sansone Walk off the Pounds series. My current goal is to do 45-minutes a day of cardio six days a week (I give myself Sundays to rest). I also do about 30-minutes of beginning strength training 5-days a week.

As far as food, we've slowly been using up our pantry and slowly restocking with healthier foods. Nowadays, we mostly buy only wholegrain pasta and flours and other whole grains. We've gradually added more and more beans and vegetables to our diet. I've found some really wonderful recipes using winter squash. We have gathered quite the collection of grains in recent months!

I'm on the lookout for a good bean cookbook, but while I continue to search, I am building up recipes I have collected from the internet. In fact, I have decided one of my goals for 2010 is to learn how to cook beans and to make them a larger part of our diet. I'm striving to add a bean dish to our menu at least once a week.

We're also eating more veges and fruit. I try to eat five servings a day, but at this point I often fail. I have added carrots and celery to snacks, as well as an apple or other seasonal fruit. This year, I'll definitely enjoy the variety of fruit available starting in late spring. I pretty much only buy fruit that's been grown in the United States; I don't want to buy fruit that's been flown in from out of the country. I would buy only local--buy I love apples and they're mostly grown in Washington!

We're spending quite a lot more on food these days as we shop almost entirely at Whole Foods, but we've decided our health is worth it. I'm sure we'll save money in the long run as we'll hopefully need less medical care as we grow older.

Fractal Quilt Finished!

Last night I finally finished binding Jeff's Fractal Quilt! Yah!! Now my queue of incomplete quilts is done, so I can start a new one if I want. Somewhere along the line, I decided I didn't want to start a new quilt until I had finished all the in-process quilts.

Now that I have, I am free to go on to my next project. Now I just need to decide what it is; maybe the library Roman shades. I could probably get them done in a week or so once I figure out the pattern.

Bad Weather = Cleaner House

We've had pretty bad weather this week, for California anyway. I think we've had about 7 inches of rain so far this month. So, I have had to cut back on my outdoor walking this week, but it turns out that's a good thing because I have turned my energy to cleaning house.

Today, I finally managed to deal with the master bathroom. We have had misc. tubs sitting around on the counters since we moved in. Today I finally managed to sort through everything and get the counters clear. I also cleaned the bathroom, because it really needed it. This is the best the bathroom has looked since we moved in.

This makes two rooms that I have managed to clear out this week. I also started in on the pile of excess boxes in the hallway outside the sewing room. It feels really good to finally make progress on getting this place cleaned up.

It's taking me a lot of time to go through these boxes because I am actually sifting them. For the most part, I'm getting rid of stuff. I've filled up the paper recycling and managed to get stuff that we're keeping put away.

We may actually be able to get this place cleaned up in the next couple of months.

School started this week. Classes look to be much like last semester; I even have the same two teachers.

Sifted Again

Today was stormy and rainy outside, so I decided to get some exercise by cleaning the final disaster room, the "library." The room was basically crammed with all the boxes we didn't get unpacked after the move and the room was really not usable as it was. Sure, there were bookcases and books in there, but you couldn't get to them very easily. Plus, we also had the return of several boxes of books and I needed to try and figure out where to put those.

So, I spent around four hours today clearing out the library and reorganizing the book cases. I think I have finally gone through all the boxes that were in that room. Mostly, I recycled whatever paper I came across. I had a whole box of software boxes that dated back to 2002! For the most part, I flattened the boxes and recycled them and tossed the software. I kept of a few of the disks, but most everything got dumped. And I have a growing donation pile that I hope we'll get rid of in the next couple of weeks.

I was actually able to squeeze in all the tubs of books onto the existing book shelves. And now all the books on the shelves are mostly sorted by subject as well.




And now that I can finally get to the windows in that room, I'm thinking about making the last set of Roman shades. Hmm, the fun part is the planning; choosing the pattern and the fabric.

Contemplating the Coming Year

We met for dinner last night with David and Melissa (Leon and Muriel) and they returned our SCA books. It reminded me of our many years in SCA and I am missing it. (At least some aspects of it.) Our lives have been in this holding pattern for too long.... We just keep holding steady, not committing to anything that requires any more than a few weeks, because we don't know where we're going to be living in three months. Maybe it's just time to do what we enjoy no matter where we live. If we end up moving, then we'll just deal with the issues.

I think I'd like to work on resuming research on some SCA projects. I'd like to make a heraldic pouch one of these days; I started researching it quite a while ago. I was hoping to stitch the pouch with our heraldic devices and devices for SCA branches where we've lived. Maybe I'll see about trying to draw the patterns for my pouch project.

I've grown a little tired of the Quicken sifting. I've entered and reconciled the credit card accounts but I still have to try and account for all the non-payroll deposits into the bank accounts. That's a lot harder, because I don't have information on all of them. Oh well, I'll do the best that I can.

Jeff is off at his co-workers house today helping to kill chickens! (He's so brave; I could never do it.) Apparently one of his co-workers has a number of chickens they need to cull. I guess I'll find out if we're vegetarians again when he comes home.... =)

Solving Financial Neglect

Last April the screen on my old PC died and I found it difficult to keep Quicken maintained. I'd have to plug it into my TV to see what was going on. And, actually, with the market crash I wasn't really too eager to get regular updates on our net worth anyway. =)

Well, finally, this week was the week to deal with the paper records. We seemed to have records drowning us everywhere we tried to deal with piles of paper. I have spent the last two full days sifting paper. It doesn't feel like it, but I've made a lot of progress.

I've got all the credit card accounts entered and reconciled. And I've got all the bank account records sifted and ready for data entry. My only problem is trying to identify non-payroll deposits; I wasn't always good about keeping those kinds of records and not all checks came with "stubs." I'll do what I can...

Our Friday evening dinner date is obviously off now that the house isn't clean. I kept waiting for our invitees to get back to me about whether the date would work and they didn't respond until this afternoon. Too late now. We'll have to go out somewhere for dinner if they decide to come.