Another 6 days and a Facebook plug

So the last week was a good warm up for the 6 days in a row thing. Since I'm feeling a lot better, I should be able to get in some good workouts this time around. Here's my plan for the next 6 days:

Day 1 (Thursday): Running on the treadmill at the gym
Day 2 (Friday): 30 minute walk because that's all I'll have time for
Day 3 (Saturday): Long hike. I don't know where but since we missed hiking last week, I'm sure we'll go somewhere.
Day 4 (Sunday): Complete Aerobic & Weight Training
Day 5 (Monday): Running on the Treadmill at the gym
Day 6 (Tuesday): Cardio & Weights

Next weekend is Thanksgiving so getting my workouts in will be a little tricky but I think it'll be doable. We've got friends coming to town so that makes it even trickier but I'm sure we'll be hiking all over creation so it shouldn't be too bad, exercise-wise. As far as food goes, I'm cooking the entire Thanksgiving feast so everything will be pretty healthy for Thanksgiving food. I'm planning to make cornbread stuffing, mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, butternut squash, pumpkin bread, apple pie and a turkey (I won't be eating the turkey but the kids and grandparents wanted it).

Okay, so here's the plug for Facebook: I'm on Facebook all the time. Myspace just doesn't do it for me. So yeah, if you're my friend and you're not on Facebook, get on Facebook so I can bore you with even more details about my life and we can communicate more and stuff.

Here's what I ate yesterday:
B: Oatmeal with banana slices, soy milk and flax seed
S: Apple and a granola bar
L: leftover homemade veggie burger (made with lentils, walnuts and sundried tomatoes) on a whole wheat bun with veganaise, catsup and lettuce with a big dill pickle on the side
D: Roasted onions, garlic and red bell peppers with veggie sausage and creamy polenta

I did it!

Yup, I did 6 days of exercise in a row. Okay, most of those days were kind of pathetic since I've been sick but at least I did something and that was the goal.

To sum it up, here's what I did:
Day 1: Step Blast
Day 2: Low Impact Step
Day 3: 60 minute walk
Day 4: 4 hours of standing at a rock concert
Day 5: 30 minute walk
Day 6: 30 minute walk

So today I get to rest. Hopefully I'll be recovered enough from my illness tomorrow that I can do a real workout.

Here's what I ate yesterday:
B: oatmeal with blueberries, soy milk and flax seed
S: banana
L: Enchilada Pie (made with corn tortillas, salsa, fat-free refried beans, spinach and soy cheese)
S: Granola bar
D: Southwest Mac & Soy Cheese (made with whole wheat pasta, soy cheese, soy chorizo, black beans and soy milk) and cauliflower
S: a few peanuts

4 days down

So immediately after I committed to six days in a row of working out, I got sick. It's just a cold, not too horrible but it still sucks. So I took it easy on my workouts over the weekend. Friday afternoon I did Low Impact Step because I wasn't sick yet and I didn't have time for anything longer. Saturday I felt crappy but I needed a few things from the store so I used that as an excuse to walk to the store. I ended up walking for about an hour and it felt good to be outside (the weather was amazing all weekend.) Yesterday I was feeling pretty crappy all day but I had a rock concert to go to last night so I rested up all day. I didn't do a formal workout but I spent 4 hours standing up so I'm counting it. If I wasn't sick, I wouldn't have let that slide but I'm counting it.

The concert was a blast! We took the kids to Club Congress to go see Ludo. The doors were supposed to open at 6:00 so we decided to eat dinner right before the show at the restaurant inside the Hotel Congress (a super-old hotel in downtown Tucson). The place looked a little sketchy but I read some glowing reviews online so we tried it. The food turned out to be really, really good. Emily got a burger as big as her head. Nick got a giant pastrami sandwich, Sean got a veggie sandwich with roasted red bell pepper and brie and I got the falafel, which was awesome. After we were done eating it was 6:10 so we headed over to pick up our tickets from will call and got pointed to a line out the door. So we go wait in line and we can hear that they're still doing sound check. They didn't open the doors until 6:30. So anyway, we finally get to the front of the line, they look us up on the list and then we go over to the ID checking guy (they were giving wristbands to the grownups and drawing X's on the kids.) So the guy automatically gives Sean a wrist band and then he asks me, "Over 21? or under 21?" and I go "over" and he goes "I need to see your ID". BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! So then we all got T-shirts and they gave away a copy of the CD with every T-shirt so now we have 4 extra copies.

So we go in and this place is seriously the 2nd tiniest venue I've ever been to (the tiniest was a crap-hole bar in Murfreesboro, TN that had ply-wood on sawhorses for tables). Anyway, the place was teeny-tiny. So tiny that I found myself wondering how an actual rock band would fit on the stage. So tiny that I started doing the math in my head: I figured there were maybe 300 people in there at $13 a head, they made about $3900 to split between 4 bands and the venue.

Anyway, the first band was called The Graduate and they were pretty good. They made me wonder when rock bands stopped looking like rock bands and started looking like the AV club or perhaps the guys who run the college radio station. The second band was called Eye Alaska and they were lame. Really lame. Like mullets and scarves lame. The third band was called The Higher and they were pretty good. They did a very rocking cover of "Bye Bye Bye" by NSync, which was cool (Sean loves covers). Then about the time we were tired and sore and ready to go home, the band we actually paid to see came on. They were great! The singer's a total goofball. In the middle of one of the songs, he stopped to tell "a story about his life" and after a few sentences, we realized he was telling the plot of "Die Hard". They ended with their only hit, "Love Me Dead" and then they came back for an encore and played "Ghostbusters"

As we were leaving, Emily saw one of her friends from school. Then on the way out the door the singer was walking in so we got him to sign one of the CDs (so now we only have 3 extras.)

Sean took a bunch of video of the show with his camera (he ran out of memory during "Ghostbusters" but he got the entire "Die Hard" thing). We haven't edited it into a movie yet but when we do, we'll stream it on our website. We haven't gotten around to editing the video from the Ben Folds show either, in case you were wondering.

So here's where I'm at workout-wise:
Day 1 (Thursday): Step Blast *check*
Day 2 (Friday): Low Impact Step *check*
Day 3 (Saturday): 60 minute walk *check*
Day 4 (Sunday): 4 hours of rocking out at a concert *check*
Day 5 (Monday): will probably go for a 30 minute walk with Sean if he's feeling up to it (he's sick too), otherwise, I'll do something easy at home.
Day 6: (Tuesday): If I'm up to a real workout, I'll probably go to the gym with Sean, otherwise, I'll probably go for another walk.

6 days in a row

I have a new challenge for myself. I'm have to work out six days in a row before I can take a planned rest day. The rule is that I have to do some kind of exercise every day, even if it's just a 30 minute walk around my neighborhood. For like three years I was working out 5-6 days a week and then this year I've totally lost my exercise mojo. Well, I've had enough of that. I'm going to get back in shape if it kills me. Put that together with a strict vegan diet (that doesn't include fried junk food) and I'll be back in my size 6 jeans in no time (my size 8s are feeling a little snug, and that frightens me.)

Here's a rough outline of what I have planned for myself this 6-day period:

Day 1: Yesterday I did a 41 minute premix from Step Blast
Day 2: Today I'm going to do a nice long workout since I'm only working half a day. I'm going to lunch with my friend Janet and I have a waxing appointment and I need to get my brakes fixed and drop Nick off for a camp out but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to squeeze it in. I'm thinking Complete Aerobic & Weight Training.
Day 3: Saturday we're probably going hiking. That totally counts.
Day 4: Sunday is going to be a busy day (for a Sunday) the cable guy is coming so I either need to workout early in the morning before he shows up, or after he leaves. I think I'll do Low Max. That night we're going to another concert so we'll need to head downtown in the afternoon (we're going to see Ludo, if you've never heard them, run out right now and buy their album, "You're Awful, I Love You". You won't regret it.) At some point I'm going to need to buy groceries too so yeah, busy day.
Day 5: Monday is TV night so that makes it harder to squeeze in a workout. I think I'll do a short one, like Express Cardio
Day 6: Tuesday me and Sean will probably go to the gym and run on treadmills together.

So if all goes according to plan, Wednesday will be a rest day, which is perfect because that's when the kids have all their church activities in the evening.

Here's what I ate yesterday:
B: Oatmeal with blueberries, flax seed and soy milk
L: Fake Chicken Sandwich (made with whole wheat bread, veganaise, avocado, lettuce and a gardenburger fake chicken patty) and an apple
S: Cliff Bar
D: Veggie Fajitas (giant mess of grilled veggies with tortillas, salsa and guacamole), black beans and rice

Eating and exercise-wise, probably the best day I've had in a long time.

Coming Soon: More Streaming Video

I don't have anything to show you yet but at least you have something to look forward to. We went to see Ben Folds in Tempe last night and it was awesome. We got some good video with the little camera but we got home late and didn't edit it together and stick it on the internet because we were too tired. I assure you it will be worth the wait.

The show was great! It was in the Gammage Auditorium at ASU which was the last building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Anyway, Ben Folds just might be the rockinest piano player of all time. Seriously, I'd rather see him than Elton John and Billy Joel put together. The only thing that might be cooler would be to see Jerry Lee Lewis circa 1950-something or maybe Scott Joplin circa 1900-something. He was very cool. He would talk about what the different songs were about and he even did a long spiel about how he put two altoid cans on the piano strings and then used a distortion pedal to make a cool sound for this one song. He played almost all of his new album, which is awesome, by the way, I highly recommend it. I think "Effington" might be one of my favorite songs of all time. Musically, it's amazing and beautiful, yet it it totally rocks. And the lyrics are hilarious ("Effington might be a wonderful effing place, I can see it from the highway and I'm wondering, are they effing in their yards, effing in their cars..."). He also played a bunch of songs from the fake album that he leaked on the internet (same song titles, completely different songs). He said the songs were supposed to be lame but they ended up liking some of them better than the real versions.

At one point during the show, he said they were going to play a bunch of new stuff and then pretend it was over, get off the stage and then come back and play a bunch of old stuff. All bands do that, but we thought it was funny that he gave us a heads up about it. We were a little disappointed that he didn't play more songs from "Whatever and Ever, Amen". We would've like to hear "The Battle of Who Could Care Less" or "Song for the Dumped" or "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces" or even "Brick" but he only played "Kate" and "Fair", neither of which were singles. Great songs, but not what I would've picked. All in all, it was an awesome show. Pictures and video coming soon!