Christmas Planning 2010

Yeah its early for this but I find if I don't figure things out now then I tend to miss out on some neat opportunities.  Fr Dave would be appalled - he thinks people start celebrating the season too early and miss out on celebrating the actual feast days (his view stretches beyond just the Christmas season). 

So here is the consolidated list of possible activities and events for me for December

Sat, Dec 4 - 2010 Jingle Bell Run/Walk -  (only $17 compared to $30+ at Milwaukee Zoo and Madison's runs)
Racine Lutheran High School
http://jbrracine.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=426504
Sat, Dec 4  - Madison Hoofers Ski Resale  -http://hoofersns.org/resale
   9:00am to 5:00pm  (can't do Sunday - reserved for cookie bake) 


Sat, Dec 4/5 - need to make it to one of St Dom's mass - they have special Sun 10:30 am mass with the Archbishop to dedicate the new renovated spaces- and have "gifts" for all at all the masses - I will miss the special mass due to cookie bake
Sun, Dec 5 locked in for annual Cookie bake

Thrs, Dec 9 @ 7:30 pm - It's a Wonderful Life at the Sunset Playhouse - BJD has 3 tickets 
http://sunsetplayhouse.com/onstage/show.php?id=27

Sat, Dec 11, 1:30 pm - Badgers Basketball at Marquette (Bradley Center)

Sat 18/ Sun 19 - Model Trains at Discovery World - http://programs.discoveryworld.org/archives/1591
   try to combine with a winter lakefront walk?, holiday lights?, tea?, etc

Dates not yet set:
Chicago Botantical Garden - Winter Wonderland
http://www.chicagobotanic.org/wonderland/

Christmas Express Train at Elegant Farmer - December 4, 5, 11, & 12 from 11 am - 3 pm
www.elegantfarmer.com

Milwaukee Holiday Lights - walk thru or take the jingle bus
http://www.milwaukeedowntown.com/categories/14-holidaylightsfestival

High Tea - a couple of options
 Pfister 23rd floor  - every Fri - Sun from 3 - 4:30 during Nov and Dec - link
 George Watts tea shop - http://www.wattsteashop.com/index.html

M&I Holiday Display - quick walkthru when you're already down town
http://www.micorp.com/mibank/solutions.cfm?ObjectID=00095BA4-9D4A-1F70-901180C8FE5A0000&


Dropped items - keep on list for review/consideration for next year

Bel Canto -- Christmas in the Basilica - Sat, Dec 4, 7:30 pm ; Sun, Dec 5, 3pm
        Basilica of St. Josaphat
        http://www.belcanto.org/dnav/6/page.htm
Mannheim Steamroller at the Bradley Center - only Tue, Dec 22 & Wed, Dec 23
http://shop.mannheimsteamroller.com/content/Tour.htm  Dropped - missed ticket sale and resale price is out of controll

 

New Challenge - pre and travel challenges

This week's salad challenge was highly successful - I had a salad every day for lunch and more importantly if I had not given myself this salad challenge I would not have had salad every day this week.  So the challenge does really work well to change my behavior.  I'm a very self-competitive person...which means I like to do things just to find out if I could do it.

Next Wednesday evening I travel to Las Vegas for 6 days.  The impetus of the trip is to see the Wisconsin Badger football game against UNLV, but we are going down early and leaving later - never leave the travel plans for a Vegas weekend to a bunch of gamblers because the weekend up becomes a week long trip!!

So back to the challenges - yes challenges with an "s".   I'm going to do a pretrip challenge and a trip challenge

Pretrip challenge
1) clear out fruit, veggies, and dairy that need to be consumed before I leave for Vegas.  This may mean doing some cooking and freezing; and bringing veggies and fruit to the canoe trip and book club cookout Update - this went very well, I'm eating the last of the cottage cheese and grapes as I type this.  The milk is in the freezer (first time trying to freeze milk - we'll see how it goes); I only have 2 apples and some carrots felt.  Current plan it take them all in m my carry-on bag.
2nd update -- mainly success - apples were eaten with a small dinner but I forgot the carrots!!  hope they are still good when I get home.  Also would have been nice to finish off the orange juice.
2) Need to get the quicken/bills paid - this has been dragging on for too long and I don't want to get late fees,etc cause I didn't get to it before I left Update- well we got have way there.  The bills are entered into Quicken and paid except for the Health Care bills - still hoping to get this taken care of before I leave tonight.  
2nd update - did not get to the Health Care bills - will need to make that a priority; also need to work on the Mortgage refinance process - received package from wells fargo the day I left

Trip Challenge - 6 days Thursday morning to Tuesday evening
1) Continue the running program - 3x  5min run/ 1 min walk for at least 20 minutes
Update - Thursday morning ran the last of the 4 imn/1 min program.  Nike ipod did not record (again), ran 23 minutes and overall felt good but slow
Friday morning  ran the first of the 5 min/1 min for 5 sessions (30 mins) again felt good but also felt slow pace combined run/walk total pace was 15 min miles.  I'm gonna blame a lot of the slow pace on the vegas experience and excess, plus not knowing where to go makes me slower as a I search the street or parking lot to figure out a route, and lastly the heat and running with a water bottle - just doesn't feel as natural -- but while this sounds negative I don't mean it to be, I'm actually very happy and proud that I've been able to get these workouts in and I'm positive that the runs will improve when I'm back sleeping in my own bed, going to be at a regular time, and eating veggies again. ;-)

2) Squats - 3 reps of 10 squats on each of the non-running days
3) Water exercise - hard to predefine but I'll know if I did it, should be hot enough to spend a lot of time in the water - let's make part of it a work out
4) Walk/hike at least 5 miles on at least 2 of the days - take pedometer to measure Update - we walked the strip on Thursday and I forgot the pedometer, but I'm going to guess overall mileage was between than 2 and 3 miles.  

Bad back

Woke up this morning with a sore back.  Not sure what happened or when it happened.  My back was a little bit tight last night during the group run.  I did do more stretching than we normally do after the run, including some upper body stretching, so I would have thought it would help rather than causing any back problems.

I had an ice bag tucked into my tanktop this morning in an effort to heal the back; also took 2 Aleve which probably helped even more.

I'm hoping the back/right shoulder are fine for Saturday's canoe outing.  I'm really looking forward to the day on the water.

Salad challenge

I'm going to try to add some weekly healthy challenges to keep me motivated and on the right track ... who knows some of these may become healthy habits.

This week's challenge is to have Salad for lunch every day this week (expect Saturday which will be excused because it's my canoe outing and it's really much easier to eat a sandwich in a canoe mid-river than a salad)

Results 

Sunday - yes

Monday - yes

Tuesday -yes

Wednesday -yes

Thursday - yes

Friday - yes!!!

Saturday - excused due to canoe outing

Fri 8/27 updating that the challenge was a success!! Salads every day and most of the huge bag of romain lettuce is consumed -- its important to use this up before next week's vacation.

I'm back ...from Healthy Living Summit

It sure has been a while since I've been back on this site.  I spend the last weekend in Chicago at the Healthy Living Summit which was both good and bad for me.   The good is its helping me get restarted on keeping this blog updated and helping me want to set some personal goals and challenges.  The bad is I was not the target audience at all - I'm close to 20 years older than the average and close to 75 more than most, which would be ok except many of the attendees were not very welcoming of anyone that wasn't the norm.  

I was excited to be in Chicago for a weekend, especially since it was the air and water show weekend.   I rode the amtrak train down to Chicago in the morning and worked form the IBM offices on Wacker.  That was really nice.  But the best part was being able to lunch with my former co-worker Jason.  It's been over a year since I had seen him and was great to get caught up.  Working from the Chicago IBM office was easier than I thought it would be - the train was quick and I had access to the IBM sametime most of the train ride so it virtually like I was in my own home office.  If I do this more often, I need to evaluate switching to the iphone or a different smart phone than the blackberry I have now - other phone have much easier internet and application access.

I loved walking around the city.  Chicago is very nice in the summer.  Its very picturesque and always has so much going on to see.  Next time I need to take more control of my schedule and make sure I do the things I want to do - in some ways I felt trapped to stay near the Congress Hotel (location of the summit) and grant park.  In hindsight I really wish I would have done 2 things - first go north to Lincoln Park and see my old fave spots - the zoo, the flower conservatory, and my regular running route through it and the marina, and second I wish I had taken the architectural boat tour.  I would have really enjoyed the boat tour.  I know I would have enjoyed both of these much more than I enjoyed the summit itself.  For me the best part of the weekend was the extended walks around the city.  I do love walking and I really get to do it so little.