Finally working out after a month of getting settled

So far this week I've worked out 4 days in a row. I'm feeling pretty superior about that. I've started Cathe's STS over and I don't remember week one being this hard. I think I've blocked it from my memory because of the trauma. Monday I did disk 1 (chest, shoulders & biceps). Tuesday I did Step Blast, which was the first serious cardio I've done in a month. It totally wiped me out. Wednesday I did STS disk 2 (back & triceps) and Thursday I did STS disk 3 (legs). Disk 3 was insane but I think I did better than the first time I tried it. I actually used weights for the crazy paper plate exercises and I still suck at wall squats but I was able to do all of the sets, even if I didn't use any weights.

My eating is back to normal too. I finally had time to go to the grocery store and get real food in the house. We'd been living on our food storage for a month, which gets old and repetitive, especially since we didn't have a whole lot of variety in our food storage yet. But it's amazing how long you can live comfortably on beans, rice, TVP, nutritional yeast, soy beans, flour and sugar.

In other news...

They finally gave me a mac at work. It's pretty sweet. It's a 2x2.93 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 8 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ram. In other words, it's rocketship fast. And I've got two monitors. I'm not sure how I lived so long without it.

Vegan MoFo Survey

I'm not participating in the Vegan Month of Food (I'm not a prolific enough blogger to actually commit to blogging regularly about food) but I saw this survey and thought it would be fun to put on my blog.

1. Favorite non-dairy milk? I make my own soymilk for cooking and putting on cereal but my favorite for just drinking is the store brand from Sprouts (I actually think all of the store brand soy milks are pretty good).

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook? This week I'm making some black bean and soy chorizo burritos, Isa's Edamame Pesto and the Pumpkin Baked Ziti from Veganomicon

3. Topping of choice for popcorn? Lately olive oil, salt and nutritional yeast

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure? Long, long ago, long before going vegetarian and before anyone could consider me a good cook, I made these horrible meatballs with rice inside. The recipe specifically said not to cook the rice before cooking the meatballs. The rice didn't cook like the recipe said it would and we ended up with meatballs with hard, uncooked grains of rice in them.

5. Favorite pickled item? The spicy carrots they have a taco shops sometimes

6. How do you organize your recipes? I have a bookshelf full of coookbooks in my kitchen. I also have some random, unorganized printouts from websites scattered around the kitchen. I should probably organize those.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal? Garbage disposal. I would compost but that would involve stuff actually growing in my garden.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods...what would they be (don't worry about how you'll cook them)? Soy beans, no question, they're seriously the most versatile food ever. Mushrooms because they're the most delicious fungus ever. And chocolate because, duh, it's chocolate.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood? We used to go to one of those pick-your-own peaches places every year and we'd bring boxes and boxes of fresh peaches and my mom would make peach jam. *drool*

10. Favorite vegan ice cream? Purely Decadent Chocolate Brownie Almond

11. Most loved kitchen appliance? My fire-engine-red Kitchen Aid mixer.

12. Spice/herb you would die without? I can only choose one? Um......cumin, I mean thyme, I mean coriander, I mean paprika, I mean ....

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time? My old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. It's that red and white checked one with the three-ring binder cover. It's got some loser recipes in it (see horrible rice-meatball disaster above) but it's got a few good basic recipes that I've doctored and made my own over the years. The Sweet & Sour Pork became Sweet & Sour Chicken which became Sweet & Sour Tofu and has also been Sweet & Sour Seitan once or twice. The Swedish Meatballs has become Swedish Bean-balls and has lately become Swedish Tempeh-balls. How long have I had the book? I think it was a wedding present almost 15 years ago.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly? I lust after the strawberry balsamic jam my friend Sarah makes

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend? Veggie Lasagne, they're always surprised when I tell them there's no cheese in it. No one seems to be able to tell the difference between mushed up, seasoned tofu and ricotta cheese.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh? I'd have to go with tofu because it's so versatile.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)? I LOVE making desserts but I don't get to make them very often because of all those pesky calories.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator? A fondue set that I've used maybe once. I swear, I'll make fondue any day now.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking: Frozen blueberries, flax seed and frozen edamame.

20. What's on your grocery list? I just went grocery shopping over the weekend but I forgot a few things. I still need to get: chickpeas, veggie lunchmeat and nutritional yeast.

21. Favorite grocery store? The Henry's in Rancho Bernardo (San Diego). Sadly I live 400 miles away and I have to settle for Sprouts. Although Sunflower just opened nearby so it might become my new favorite but I haven't actually gone shopping there yet.

22. Name a recipe you'd love to veganize, but haven't yet. Chocolate meringue pie. I've seen a recipe for vegan meringue but I haven't been brave enough to try it.

23. Food blog you read the most. Or maybe the top 3? fatfreevegan, vegandad and veganfeastkitchen

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate? Dark Chocolate. I like Endangered Species brand.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately? I bought $5 worth of fresh basil to make pesto.

I've discovered the secret to weightloss..

Moving refrigerators, pianos and heavy boxes every day for three weeks. The past three weeks has been a packing, moving and unpacking extravaganza while we've been moving into a different house. I've been noticing that my clothes are feeling a bit more comfortable than usual so I weighed myself this morning. Yup, 4 pounds down with no regular workouts. Anyone need help moving any time soon? Actually, I'm hoping to be done unpacking by next weekend so I can get back to my workouts.

In other news...

This past weekend we took a break from the whole unpacking thing and went up to Phoenix for the Fall Frenzy music festival. We got to see Fallout Boy, Blink-182, Flogging Molly and Social Distortion. There were more bands playing earlier in the day but we couldn't stomach standing around in 104 degrees. I like the Bravery and all but dude, 104 degrees! Fallout Boy was really good, better than I expected actually. Someone needs to tell Pete Wentz that summer in Phoenix is a whole lot more comfortable if you're not wearing a black hoodie on stage with bajillion degree lights pointing at you. He complained that it was as hot as lava. They played really well though, even if they were sweating to death in their black jackets. They played a cover of "Don't Stop Believing" which was awesome.

Blink-182 was as good as I expected them to be. They played all the hits and a few non-hits that should've been hits. The juvenile humor will never stop being funny (Tom DeLong dedicated "All the Small Things" to his penis"). It was great. It was everything I wanted it to be.

Flogging Molly was amazing! I don't know what I was expecting but I wasn't expecting them to be that awesome! They were everything that I wanted Dropkick Murphys to be (no offense to Dropkick Murphys, I still blame the crappy sound at crappy Soma). They rocked out non-stop for an hour and a half. I'm a little disappointed that they didn't play "Queen Anne's Revenge" but "7 Drunken Pirates" made up for it. I'd never seen people crowd surfing to Irish music before. I've also never seen anyone drink so much on stage. I'm not sure how someone can drink that much and not fall off the stage. They're definitely really, really Irish. Apparently they're huge in Arizona. They play in Phoenix on St. Patrick's Day every year.

Social Distortion was also great. I don't think I have enough tattoos or smoke enough cigarettes to be a real Social D fan though. We were definitely in the minority with the Social D crowd. By the time they were done, I felt like I'd licked an ashtray *cough* *wheeze* *gag* The music was awesome though and I knew almost every song. I still can't figure out why I've never gone out and bought any of their albums. Must be the tattoo/smoking thing. Mike Ness said we didn't have to go to work today but I decided against staying home, sleeping in, watching cartoons and eating sugary cereal like he recommended. As good as cartoons and cocoa puffs sounded, I don't think that "Mike Ness said I didn't have to work today" would be accepted as a valid excuse.

Anyway, it's back to work, reality and unpacking. Hopefully we'll be all unpacked by this weekend, because it's getting old. I miss my workouts.

Vacation!

We just got back from our summer family vacation yesterday. Vacation was awesome. It was a classic family road trip. We drove from Tucson up to Page, AZ where we went kayaking in Lake Powell, which was a blast. Then we checked out the Glen Canyon Dam where the visitor's center had more security than an inner-city elementary school. There was a big sign that said "No Weapons, purses, bags or backpacks" and we had to walk through a metal detector. I guess there really are people who want to blow up that dam (not that I blame them, I understand Glen Canyon was breathtakingly beautiful before they filled it with water). We thought it was really funny that there was a shelf of Edward Abbey books and they didn't have "The Monkey Wrench Gang", a novel about a plot to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam. Edward Abbey was a park ranger who wrote lots of books about the southwest and HATED that dam. We thought it was funny that they even had any of his books at all. After Lake Powell, we drove out to Utah and laughed at all the quirky stuff in Utah that could never exist anywhere else (like the Missionary Mall with a giant inflatable missionary on the roof).

The next day we went to Timpanogos Cave. To get to the cave entrance for the tour, you have to hike 1.5 miles on a trail with a 1100 foot elevation gain. We're pretty experienced hikers and we thought it was quite the hike for just 1.5 miles. We spent the whole hike making fun of all of the inapropriate shoes we saw. Who goes on a 1.5 mile hike up a mountain wearing flip flops? Or rhinestone sandals? The views from the trail were amazing and the cave was awesome so that made up for a lot. After the tour, we hiked back down the mountain and got our first Junior Ranger patch of the trip. We've started collecting Junior Ranger patches from national parks. You have to do a little activity book and some of them make you attend a ranger program or pick up some trash. It's supposed to be for kids but there's no upper age limit. We're big nerds but we're okay with that. The Timpanogos Cave patch has a mountain lion on it. Then we hopped in the car and drove all the way to West Yellowstone, MT.

The next day was our first day in Yellowstone. It was amazing! The boiling mud pots were just about the craziest thing I've ever seen. There were also pools of unnaturally blue water that were boiling. Seriously, it looked like you could cook macaroni in those pools. When we went to see Old Faithful, we got to see Beehive Geyser while we were waiting. Beehive geyser is really close to Old Faithful and is more impressive but less predictable. It shoots water 30 feet into the air for about 5 minutes and it goes off roughly every 12 hours. It was about 2 hours late when we got there. A minute or two after Beehive was winding down, Old Faithful went off. It was very cool. We spent the whole day just driving to different areas and exploring the park. The park is so big that even if you had a month there you couldn't see everything. That night we went to a ranger program on wolves and finished our Junior Ranger booklets and spent the night in the Grant Village lodge right near Yellowstone Lake. The next morning we got our second Junior Ranger patch of the trip. It has a bear paw print on it. The second day in Yellowstone we spent more time hiking, which was really nice. We hiked to Yellowstone Falls, which was really, really beautiful (and got to see lots of inappropriate footwear on the way). We heard some really hilarious comments while we were walking by other people. One guy said, "Oh look, fit people" and then he said, "We shoulda brought water." Earlier that day, we got to experience a bison traffic jam. One of the bison herds decided to cross the street so a few bison were milling around in the middle of the road while the rest of the herd crossed. I'm convinced that they do that on purpose to stop the cars while the herd is crossing the street. The baby bison were super cute. What really shocked us were all the people getting out of the cars and walking right up to the bison to take pictures. Um, they're 2000 pound animals that can run 30 mph and really value their personal space. Walking up to a bison is a good way to get killed and this was a whole herd! The guy who really shocked us was the one who walked right up to them WITH HIS BABY! Holy crap! What was that guy thinking?! Later that day, after the hike, we saw a wolf. He was jogging through a field scoping out a bison that was away from the rest of the herd.

After Yellowstone, we drove to Grand Teton and camped in a tent cabin. The cabin itself kind of sucked but the park was beautiful! It was a lot less crowded than Yellowstone. In the morning we went on a 5 mile hike around String Lake. We walked for over an hour before we saw any other people. It was totally peaceful. We only saw one person with inappropriate shoes. We called him Bear Bate. He was by himself 2 miles from anywhere at 7:00 in the morning (prime bear feeding time), carrying no water, wearing flip flops and listening to an iPod. After the hike, we got our third Junior Ranger Patch of the trip. It has a moose on it. Sadly, we did not see any moose on our trip. That would've been super cool. On the way out of the park, we checked out Jackson Hole, WY (Harrison Ford lives there). It was very touristy and there were a lot of shops selling moose antler chandeliers and cheesy t-shirts.

On our way out of Wyoming and back to Utah, we checked out Fossil Butte National Monument. It was small and kind of lame but it was on our way and it was the only National Park site in Wyoming we hadn't been to yet and it was another stamp in our National Park passport book. Turned out they had 5 stamps and a Junior Ranger patch. Score! It was the fourth Junior Ranger patch of the trip and it has a fish skeleton on it. After that, we drove all the way to southern Utah so we could check out Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon and Zion before heading home.

The next day we hit Cedar Breaks National Monument and Bryce Canyon National Park. Cedar Breaks was amazing. It's now one of our all-time favorite parks. We drove up to the visitor's center at 10000 feet and hiked 4 miles (4 miles at 10000 feet is pretty tough for sea level desert people like us). Along the rim of the canyon are bristlecone pines which are the oldest trees in the world. They live about 5000 years. If you imagine what the oldest tree in the world would look like, that's what a bristlecone pine looks like. They're really gnarled and twisted and the dirt around the roots are all eroded away because the trees have been there for so long. They're very cool looking.

We spent that afternoon in Bryce Canyon National Park. The Canyon was really cool but the park was really crowded. It was all European tourists, which seemed really odd to us. Not bad, just unexpected. That was where we got our fifth Junior Ranger patch of the trip. It has a stick figure with a ranger hat on it.

We spent the whole next day at Zion National Park. We were coming towards the end of the trip and we were getting pretty exhausted from all the hiking so we only planned to hike two miles (the middle Emerald Pools trail) and ended up hiking 6. We wanted to go see The Narrows, which is where the canyon walls are so close together that you have to hike right down the middle of the river to get through. Turned out we had to hike for a mile along the river just to get there and then we just had to get in to say we did it. Then we were having so much fun and the water felt so good that we walked through the water for about a mile before we turned around. It was one of the coolest thing we'd ever done. Nick was wigging out for a while at the beginning because he hates getting his clothes wet but eventually he got over it. Sometimes we forget about his autistic quirks and that's one of them.

The next day we drove back to Arizona. We stopped at Pipe Springs National Monument, which was way cooler than we thought it would be. There's a spring there so people have lived there for thousands of years. The Mormon pioneers built a ranch there and they built the ranch house right over the spring so they had running water inside. It was really interesting. There were living history demonstrations so there was a guy making arrowheads and a guy making stuff out of wood and another guy showing how to make fire with flint and steel. Then we went to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which was one of the coolest places I've ever been in my life. It was totally different than the South Rim. It wasn't crowded and it was a lot more rustic. The rim trail wasn't paved (hiking just isn't the same when you're not walking on dirt) and the lodge is overlooking the canyon and has a huge window with big cushy couches where you can just sit and stare at the canyon. They also have a back porch with chairs where you can sit. We sat on that back porch and stared at the canyon for about an hour. It was so relaxing and beautiful. I can't wait to go back. Then we drove to Flagstaff and spent the night there before driving home yesterday.

It was truly an awesome vacation. We went to 9 National Park sites in 10 days, got 5 Junior Ranger patches and hiked over 20 miles. We ate a lot of crap but the hiking balanced it out.

So "Active Recovery Week" has become "Get Stuff Done Week"

I worked out a bit but I mostly just used my non-STS time to get stuff done. I did laundry, washed motorcycles, dealt with Emily's multitude of teenage girl issues (life was so much simpler when she was 11, can we go back to that?), just spent good quality time getting stuff done. I did a bit of running on the treadmill and went for a few walks but I didn't do a serious workout all week. Sunday I get to start STS Mesocycle 2 and my workout cards are all printed out and ready to go. Of course, I'll be interrupted by vacation after the first week but I don't think I'll get too derailed since we'll be spending all of our vacation time hiking and being outside.

Here's my workout plan for next week:

Sunday: STS Disc 13 (Chest, Shoulders & Triceps)
Monday: STS Disk 14 (Legs)
Tuesday: STS Disk 15 (Back & Biceps)
Wednesday: Low Impact Circuit (Timesaver Cardio Premix)
Thursday: Vacation (driving)
Friday: Vacation (Lake Powell)
Saturday: Vacation (Timpanogos Cave)

Recovery Week

So I finished Mesocycle 1 of Cathe's STS system and I'm enjoying a much deserved "active recovery" week. Saturday I went running on the treadmill with Sean at the gym and it went really well. I think I've gotten faster from doing such tough workouts at home this past month. Then we went to Sabino Canyon with our friend Janet and walked about 3 miles. It was such a nice day, we just had to be outside. Sunday I rested and last night I ended up missing my workout due to life just getting in the way of stuff (I have to constantly repeat the mantra "Must not kill teenage daughter..."). I think tonight and Thursday I'll mess around with the Wii Fit and tomorrow and Friday I'll run. It's supposed to be 98 on Saturday (better than 103, which it's supposed to be tomorrow) but I think if we head out early enough, we'll be able to get a good hike in.

Finished STS Week 3!

My legs are fried and my arms are jello but I did it. One more week and I'll be done with Mesocycle 1. I'm debating whether or not I should take my "active recovery week" after that since I already took a week off due to being sick. I guess I'll see how I feel after next week.

Emily's birthday dinner last night was fun. We got a bunch of veggie sushi and a bunch of fish sushi there was plenty for everyone to eat what they wanted. My asparagus sushi was pretty popular with the kids. Asparagus + avocado = best sushi ever! We also got some veggie gyozas (little fried dumplings with sauce) and some veggie spring rolls. It was quite the feast. After dinner they brought out a desert for the birthday girl. It was this amazing chocolate cake, strawberries, blueberries and ice cream. Wow! Emily loved her presents. We got her a really nice mummy bag for camp (and future camping/backpacking trips we may go on), a sleeping pad and pillow to go with the sleeping bag, a Swiss army knife, a basketball and the book "What the Dickens" by Gregory Maguire (it's about a rogue tooth fairy). After dinner the kids went outside and played basketball using two garbage cans for baskets.

Tomorrow we're completing the garage-junk-purging-process by having a yard sale. Big time fun, I know. Hopefully we'll have gotten rid of everything before 10:00. We took all the cheesy stuff like old clothes and books to salvation army already so the only stuff we have to sell is the stuff that's actually good. Hopefully we'll make enough money from the yard sale to buy a new charcoal grill. We've decided that me and Sean aren't smart or handy enough to operate a gas grill (which is one of the things we're selling).