Hello From Michigan

I'm sitting here at a hotel in Jackson, Michigan. Just thought I'd stop in and say hello! Rick and I are golfing this afternoon. We went and looked at the golf course yesterday (the manager was nice enough to let us take a cart and drive around the entire course). It looks really hard! I know I'm going to struggle (not to mention it's supposed to be really hot outside today). I'll just try my best. Hopefully I'll be able to finish all 18 holes. There are a lot of hills, lots of water and swamp areas to hit over (which I probably won't be able to do) and even the greens are hilly. The course is beautiful though. I'll take my camera along and take some pictures while I'm there. When I get back home I'll share them with you. I'd also like to check out one of the parks while we're here, but who knows. It's vacation, I'm just going with the flow. :) Well I'm outta here! See you when I get home. :) Don't forget about me. LOL!

This and That

The blog is going to be on the back burner for this week. Rick is on vacation and I haven't been online much (it's kinda like my vacation too). We went golfing with Ben this afternoon and had a lot of fun (my forearms got burned and itch like crazy, but I stopped by Walmart on the way home and picked up some stuff for that. I also finally found a brace that fits my knee, so hopefully that will help with the pain some). We have plans for tomorrow and Monday to visit family, then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we'll be in Michigan (we're just staying in Michigan two nights. The rest of the time we'll be home, but doing stuff around here locally. I'm also hoping to get some cleaning done when we get back from Michigan). Rick goes back to work on June 4th, so I should have more time to come and blog then. I will try to blog between now and then if I can, but worse case scenario will be the 4th. I'm going to take my laptop to Michigan with me, so if the lodge we're staying at has Wifi, then I'll try and blog Tuesday night. TTYL!

Bummer!

Well, the scale didn't go quite the way I had seen it going when I weighed in this morning. Not that it surprises me in any way, since that just seems to be how it is. LOL! Almost all week I was down 3 pounds. I even thought at one point "hey I could maybe even lose 4-5 pounds by Wednesday". I stepped on the scale this morning, and it screamed "get off!". LOL! Ok, not really, but I'm sure if it could speak it might have. :) I was only down 1 pound! I know I shouldn't say "only" because 1 pound is still 1 pound, but after gaining last week and then being down 3 pounds all the way until today just sucked! I'll still happily take my pound, but I want the other 2 pounds too. I feel a bit cheated! Like I worked hard all week and got my paycheck to discover they took all of it but a dollar. You know what I mean? LOL! I know why I was up. Part of it was because I had Taco Bell for dinner last night. I still stayed within my points, I just think the sodium helped do me in. The other part is... I'm about to get a little graphic here, so you might want to skip to the next paragraph if you can't take it.... ha, I see how you are... you're still reading 'cause you really want to know! LOL! Ok, the other part of it is that I hadn't been to the bathroom (I don't think I need to give anymore details than that). I went to class, weighed in, and then sat there and drank 34 ounces of water. That water must have helped because as soon as I got home.... well, let's just say the other 2 pounds probably got flushed this morning. LOL! I'll bet tomorrow morning if I weigh myself I'll be down. Want to bet? Huh? Double or nothing? LOL! Well, I'll come back tomorrow and let you know if I'm right. :)

Other than my weigh in today, I just did some laundry, filled orders, made grilled chicken and oven roasted corn for dinner (yummy), and watched American Idol (I'm glad Jordin won. Don't get me wrong, I thought Blake was awesome with his beat boxing and my favorite song that he did was "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane, but Jordin is the better singer and deserved to win). I like the song Kelly Clarkson sang tonight too. I might have to get her album when it comes out. And of course, Chris Daughtry rocked last night, can't forget about him.

I don't sit and do nothing but watch TV, but I'm excited about a couple of shows coming up for the summer. I Tivo the shows and watch them when I go to bed. Two of them are "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Hell's Kitchen". Woohoo!!!

Ok, I'm outta here. Got some more stuff to do before I head for bed. Thanks for listening to me whine about my weight loss. LOL! TTYL!

My Golf Video

Sorry guys, I'm heading to bed early tonight, so again instead of leaving you with nothing, I'll share a video I made this past week. Rick and his buddies go golfing and I tag along to take pictures sometimes. Then I make them all a DVD. These pictures were taken last September at a golf course called "Cook's Creek" here in Ohio. I just finally got around to getting the video finished last week. The video is about 12 minutes long. I realize you don't know the people in the video, but the music might make you want to jump up and do an Irish dance during the 2nd half (opportunity for activity points people!). LOL! So that you have a little bit of who's who... in the picture below from left to right is: Vic, Ed, Jerry and Rick. Rick works 3rd shift with Vic and Vic knows Ed and Jerry from either a previous job he had or from church (I can't remember). They all play pretty well, but Vic has the best swing, and Jerry can really hit the crap out of the ball for his age. LOL! Ed and Rick can hold their own, but Vic usually wins. When you watch the video, you'll notice Rick has a baseball like swing (he played baseball from the time he was a little kid until probably 7-8 years ago). It's kinda funny to look at. :) Ok, just click the picture to go to the video (you'll be leaving my blog and going to another page to see it). Let me know what you think. Thanks! TTYL!

Going Bonkers

This is going to be pretty short tonight. I had planned on working all day, but my dad called around noon and asked me to come help clean out the shed to see what we can sell at a garage sale we're going to have soon, and to also get rid of any junk that has made its way out there over the last couple of years. So that's where I spent my afternoon. My knee was really killing me (even after taking 2 ibuprofens for it earlier), so when I got home I sat with some ice on it. It doesn't hurt as bad now, but then again I haven't been up walking around on it much either. I made dinner (left over pork and mashed potatoes) and then I got to working on this weeks orders. I've gotten the invoices typed up, but I still have to sign books, fill the orders and then get the shipping labels typed up and put on. I'll be up for another 3-4 hours, so I'm going to go get busy. I just didn't want to skip my blog for today (even though I'm not really telling you anything significant in any way, I just feel better when I know I've written in my blog). I did great on points today. I didn't get to take my walk, but I figure working some this afternoon helps to make up for it. I think a walk would have been easier (not to mention faster. LOL!). Just so you don't feel cheated, I'll leave you with a picture of Riley I took a few days ago (he needs a bath and a haircut really bad). LOL! I know, you're thinking... "what a treat! I logged in here to hear her whine about stuff and look at her dog." Sorry, it's all I've got for now and I've been talking about Riley lately, so I figure maybe you'd like to see what he looks like (if you didn't already). :) TTYL!

Fore!

Rick and I went golfing with Ben today. It just wasn't a good day for me. LOL! I knew it wasn't going to be a great day when we got to the golf course and I discovered Rick hadn't brought my 3 Wood. I asked him before we left home "did you get my 3 Wood out of your car?" and he said "yes". Hmmm. He never listens to me. I've been trying to tell him that for some time now. Today drove home my point. LOL! I guess next time I'll double check instead of asking. Lesson learned. I wasn't too happy about it though because it's the main club I use to not only tee off, but also for a lot of my fairway shots. Luckily I had my Perfect Club in my bag, but I honestly don't like it. It's heavier than my 3 Wood and I don't hit it the same. Before today I had only hit it a couple of times (enough to know I didn't like it). I didn't have much choice but to use it today. LOL! Still not a perfect club for me. I hit it "decent" a few times, but mostly I just sucked. I wasn't getting as much distance as I do with my 3 Wood and I wasn't as accurate with it. I also had a lot of wormburners right off of the tee. It just wasn't pretty. I thought Ben was going to be the under dog today since he hasn't golfed in a few years, but I've gotta tell ya.... he was making some good shots. I was quite surprised (Good job Ben!). :)

My knee started to hurt around the 12th hole. I was able to forget about the pain though during one hole when a Bumble Bee wouldn't stop coming at me. I don't know what made me so special (I wasn't wearing a flowered shirt or anything). I just couldn't get away from it. I even jumped out of the cart while it was still moving at one point trying to get away, but that stupid thing just followed me. So here's a vision for you.... I'm running around in the middle of the fairway, trying to get away from this stupid bee... Rick is swatting at it with a club... and Ben is laughing his ass off in the cart. LOL!!!!!!! The adrenaline from all of it just made my knee pain disappear. LOL! It was back soon after though. :) Ben was nice enough to by a traveling pharmacy on the course and gave me something for the pain, so that helped (thanks Ben!).

I was getting kinda tired by about the 15th hole. I was having fun even though I was having to hit the ball a million times. LOL! That's what the day is all about anyway....hanging with friends and having fun. :) It started to rain a little bit on the 17th hole and a little harder on the 18th hole, but overall we had nice weather today. Not too hot and not too sunny with a nice breeze going. :) TTYL!

Lets Hit The Bars

I'm not doing a good job at keeping this daily blog up lately am I? I had planned on writing this yesterday, but I got to doing other things and then we went to my parents for dinner and cards. I was just too tired to get on the computer when I got back home. I was actually going to write this before we left for my parents, but I called my mom to double check if we'd be taking a walk after dinner or not. She said probably not, so I got Riley into the car and off we went to the park for our walk. That's a total of 3 miles, 3 days in a row now. I know, it doesn't seem like much, but it's about all I can do right now. It's a far cry from the 6-10 miles I was able to walk in 1 day just a couple of years ago. :( It's ok though, I'll get there again eventually. I just have to start out somewhere. I remember when I first started out walking back in 2001. I was actually in a little worse shape than I am now, so I know it does get better over time. I just have to keep at it. Just two more walks between now and Tuesday evening, and I'll have made my goal for the week of walking 5 times. :)

Ok, I'm supposed to talk about a few new bars I tried this week (by bars, I don't mean the type you go to drink at, these are the kind you eat). LOL! I'm even going to tell you about the flavors I didn't really like. :)

Ok, the first 4 bars are all made by Kellogg's and they're called Special K cereal bars. I'm sure most of you have either heard of them or even tried them by now. I had only had 1 flavor before and it's been quite some time. Each bar is 90 calories and 2 points. The texture is almost like a rice crispy treat, but not as gooey.

My least favorite two were the "peaches and berries" and the "chocolatey drizzle". How can I not like something called "chocolatey drizzle" you ask? Well because the "chocolatey" part just wasn't very "chocolatey" to me. It tasted like a fake chocolate. In fact, the first bite I took I actually said "eeeww". It was that bad. LOL! Rick tried it and said it was ok but not that good. His exact words were "when they say drizzle, that's all they mean". LOL! I should probably also tell you that Rick likes just about anything. LOL! The "peaches and berries" bar was a little better, but I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I thought the combination of peaches and berries was a little weird for a cereal bar. It was sweet, but just not a favorite. Rick ate one and he said he liked it, so maybe it's just me, or again, he likes a lot of different things. :)



The next two bars were "strawberry" and "vanilla crisp". These two were my favorites. They were both sweet and tasted like what I thought they would. The strawberry was probably a little sweeter than the vanilla. Honestly, I doubt I'd really eat any of these bars for breakfast (even though they're called cereal bars). They aren't really filling and they're too sweet. The fiber content is either 1 gram or less than 1 gram for each of them too, so they aren't going to fill you up by any means. I would recommend them though as a snack or even a dessert. For 2 points, they're pretty good if you're craving something sweet though. :)



These next two bars were my absolute favorites out of the 6 bars I tried. They're also made by Kellogg's. They're called "crunchy nut sweet & salty granola bars". One is "chocolatey peanut" and the other is called "chocolatey almond". They're 3 points each, but I thought they were much denser than the cereal bars. They're kind of like the cereal bars, but the tops have nuts on top and the bottoms have been dipped in chocolate. This time "chocolatey" actually tastes like chocolate unlike the other bar. The "chocolatey peanut" bar is both sweet and salty just like it says. It only has 1 gram of fiber, but it also has 5 grams of protein (where the cereal bars above only have 1 gram of protein). The "chocolatey almond" bar is also both sweet and salty, but it has 2 grams of fiber. It also has 5 grams of protein. I would be more likely to spend an extra point on these bars over the cereal bars. I just felt like they were more filling and the taste was far superior. If I had to choose between the peanut or the almond bar, I'd probably choose the almond. I just prefer almonds over peanuts, so that's just me. Not only that, but peanuts are a little softer than almonds, so I like the harder crunch. :)



Well, I could probably sit here and talk about a few more bars that I've tried and liked, but I'll save that for another blog. I've got some cleaning to do today as well as laundry, so I'm off to take care of that. TTYL!

Renewed Motivation

Sorry I didn't post last night. I wanted to tell you about a couple of new products that I tried (new to me anyway), but I had trouble getting my camera to cough up the pics. Finally I said to heck with it. So now I just have more to talk about tonight. I did finally get the pics off the camera tonight. Stubborn little devil! LOL!

I weighed in yesterday and I had my first gain. I won't lie about it. I had a terrible day Saturday and I just ate everything and anything I could get my chubby little fingers around. LOL! Anyway, I considered taking a pass at my Weight Watchers meeting (going to the meeting but not getting on the scale). I was planning on doing it until the night before when I really gave it some thought. Who am I really cheating when I cheat and decide not to weigh in? I'm not really cheating anyone but myself. Looking back at my long list of weekly weigh ins from 2001 to 2004, I noticed a pattern. Even though I did have a few gains along the way, I never missed a meeting (except for the 3 times that WW was closed due to a holiday). I also never took a pass. I faced the scale no matter what the damage for the week was. That's what I decided to do this week. I went to my meeting, grumbled something along the lines of knowing I was up this week to the weigher and stepped on the scale. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it wasn't good either. I was up 2.2 pounds. You know what? It's ok. I actually think some good has come from seeing this gain. It's renewed my motivation really.

I had a chat with myself Wednesday. I said "Aimee, you've got to get a grip. You still have a long way to go, and if you keep doing this, you're either not going to make it, or it's going to take you forever to get there. Get a grip on the sweets, they aren't good for you and they aren't really doing anything for you. If you're going to eat them, they you're going to have to earn them. You also need to get off of your fat butt and start moving. Doesn't matter what kind of pain you're in. It won't get better until you get some of this weight off anyway, so you're just going to have to work through it." With that being said, I put the leash on Riley (my dog), drove to the park and walked the mile around the path. My knee was killing me, but I worked through it. I came home and had a 1 point pudding with fat free whipped topping as my reward and sweet for the day. I felt really good about my day and about myself and I know Riley enjoyed the walk too. I've walked him so little since I got him a year and a half ago that he doesn't even know how to walk properly on a leash. He pulls ahead and weaves back and forth in front of me. That's my fault. If I'd taken him for more walks and taught him how to walk properly when I got him, then I wouldn't have to be training him now.

Today I went grocery shopping. I came home, unloaded the groceries, loaded Riley into the car and we hit the park again. It was a little easier today even though my knee was still killing me. He also walked a little better and he didn't try to chase everyone who walked by him. I just took him for another walk about 30 minutes ago. We didn't walk a mile this last time, but we still went for a walk. We'll both get there. I told Riley on our walk today "you're going to be walking by my side in a nice manner by the end of summer and I'm going to be walking further than a mile, so we're just going to have to work together). LOL! Yes, I know... I talk to my dog like he understands everything I say. :) By the way, I weighed myself this morning and I was down 2 pounds. Yay me! LOL!

Ok, well before this gets too long let me tell you about a couple of products I had this week....

The first two are dinners made by Hormel called "Compleats". They can be found in the grocery aisle where the unrefrigerated dinners and microwaveable stuff is. I bought them at Super Walmart and each costs around $2.

This first one is Roast Beef and Gravy. Only 4 points for the whole thing.

The second one is Beef Pot Roast w/ potatoes & carrots in gravy. Only 5 points.

They make other flavors too, but they're a little higher in points. I've had the chicken breast with mashed potatoes once before. I want to say it was 5 or 6 points. I've also had the turkey with dressing awhile ago, but I can't remember how many points it was. It might be 5 or 6 points as well. I think if you work outside the home, these would be good for work. They only take 90 seconds to heat up. I should remind everyone though to watch the sodium if that's a problem for you. Prepackaged foods like this tend to be pretty high in sodium.

The last product I'm going to share tonight is Green Giant Just for One individual frozen veggie trays. I just happened to spot these when I was picking up some chopped broccoli the other day. The two flavors I saw were corn in butter for 2 points per tray and broccoli in cheese sauce for 1 point per tray. You get 4 individual trays per package and each tray takes about 2 minutes to heat. The reason I picked up a couple is because most of you know I'm not a big veggie eater, so I thought these would be easy for me to pop into the microwave and it was already portioned out for me. I bought them at Super Walmart and each package costs a little under $3. Sure, you could buy a big bag a veggies for that, but like most things that are portioned out, you're paying for convenience. :) Here's what the broccoli and cheese package looks like...


Well that's it for tonight. If I get time tomorrow I'll tell you about the snack bars I bought today. I might just have to open each box up and cut a small piece off of each one so I can share what they all taste like (hey, I just got them today. I've only tried one so far... remember.... renewed motivation). LOL! TTYL!

The Dreaded Visit

I had an appointment yesterday to see the doctor. Something I've been putting off for quite some time now since I don't have any health insurance and because it's not something I enjoy going through. I'd been having some pain and a few other worries, so I figured it was time to get my butt in there. The exam went ok, though it was a bit rushed and extremely uncomfortable. The Dr. said I should get my results back in about a week (unless they find something wrong, then they'll call me before that). Hopefully I won't get a call this week. He gave me a prescription to help with the pain part (I have PCOS) so hopefully I won't have to deal with that as much. Oh and get this... he told me that the other problem I've been experiencing (sorry not sharing details) is probably hormonal. LOL! Great, I've come to a point in my life where I'm hormonal now. I'm a 33 year old hormonal woman. Lovely! LOL!!!!! I can't complain though. I'll take hormonal over a a dreaded phone call any day. I've been down that road once before when I was around 21 years old. I don't want to go through all of that again or worse.

Sorry I didn't blog yesterday, I just didn't feel like blogging. I had some stuff on my mind, so I went and hung out with an old friend I went to High School with for a few hours. We just hung out and watched TV and talked about various things. We don't get to talk much, but we try to hang out once or twice a month when we can. It's nice to get out of the house and just hang sometimes. :)

Since I played around yesterday and didn't work, I have a lot to catch up on this evening. If any of you like Linkin Park, I got their new CD today and it's awesome! If you get it this week, you can get it much cheaper than the regular price at most places. I got the one that comes with the DVD in it. It was only $3 more than the regular price of just the CD. Can't beat that. :) Here's one of my more favorite songs from the CD...

Linkin Park - What I've Done

Happy Mother's Day!

I don't really have anything to write about tonight, but I wanted to stop in and say Happy Mother's Day to everyone. I found this neat little widget on another blog and filled one out for myself, so I'll leave you with this (don't want to leave you with nothing) LOL! TTYL!

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It's A Blah Day

I didn't get to bed until 4:00 this morning because I stayed up working, and then built the new blog (not complaining, just sharing). I got up at 9:00, finished up getting the shipping labels on this weeks orders, then went and dropped them off at the post office. From there I stopped by the bank and then went to Walmart (they're next door to each other, so I figured if I was going to be so close to Walmart, how could I not stop in? LOL!). While I was there I stalked the ice cream aisle. I thought maybe I'd buy some ice cream, but I came across the Popsicles and other treats that were colorful and fun, so I decided to blow off the ice cream (like I need it anyway).

I did find these frozen limeade push up type pops made by Minute Maid. They come in Limonada and Cherry flavor. They're both 1 point each. I wouldn't normally spend 1 point on a popsicle, but I thought the flavors sounded really good and at least they aren't on a stick where it will drip down your arm if you want to eat it outside. LOL! I've tried the cherry so far and I really like it. :) Here's what they look like...




I just don't feel like doing much today. Rick is out playing golf (he left at 5:30 this morning. He's playing in a scramble an hour and a half north of here to benefit fire fighters). I'd have gone, but I'm not good enough to play in a scramble yet and I'm not a morning person either. LOL! So, I'm just sitting here really doing nothing much of anything. I'm so use to keeping myself busy, but like I said... it's a blah day. I went to my message board as well as the Weight Watcher message board and looked around for a few minutes. I scanned through my email but don't really feel like answering those right now. Then I went to Dalco's website and ordered some generic ink for my printer since I'm almost out. I watered my flowers on the back porch, then sat there for a minute while Riley sniffed the grass, but it was too hot in the sun, so I came back in. I ate lunch (a salad and leftover homemade pizza for 10 points). Now I'm sitting here listening to music. I'm just sitting here listening to random songs that I like (I found videos on You-Tube so you can watch instead of just listening if you're interested)....

I love this song! It sounds better on the CD though.


Well, I guess I'll go find nothing else to do for awhile. LOL! TTYL!

I Now Have 2 Blogs

In case you're wondering what happened to my posts from the last 3 days on The Beck Diet Solution, I've decided to move them to their own blog. I realize not everyone probably wants to read about it everyday, so I'll post about my daily stuff here like I use to, and then I'll also be posting about The Beck Diet Solution on my new blog everyday (well, at least until the 6 weeks are up in the book).

You can get to the new blog by clicking on the image in dark pink over to the right of the page - under the t-shirt (I'm telling you this now because you won't always remember this post to come back and click the links I'm giving you). I apologize to those of you who left comments on my blog over the past 3 days, but when I moved the information to the new page, I lost all of the comments that were left.

I think I'd like to be conceited and just keep this blog about me. LOL! No seriously, you know I'd never just write about myself. Hehe! I'm going to go back to posting about general stuff, things I did each day, new food finds, etc. I'll keep the long boring posts for the people who are really interested. LOL! Actually, I hope some of you are interested because The Beck Diet Solution is a good book, but if you really don't want to read it, I won't make you. LOL! Ok, I'm off to bed. Have a great weekend!

Lunch Time

I was at Super Walmart the other day and came across the new Hillshire Farm Entree Salad kits. They were $2.50 each (honestly I don't know if that was regular price or if they were on sale. I can't remember). I'd seen the commercial a few times before on TV, but hadn't seen them in the store yet (I probably just wasn't really looking). Here's one of the commercials if you haven't seen it. It's kinda funny (just push the play button in the middle of the picture)...

Anyway, I decided to have this for lunch today. The kind I had was the chicken and bacon club entree. It's 7 points if you eat the dressing, and 6 points if you don't. I know, you're thinking 7 points for a salad? But seriously it was good and I was full afterwards. It's a meal. In the kit you get: oven roasted chicken breast that is cubed, bacon bits, finely shredded cheddar cheese, garlic and butter croutons, and a packet of light ranch dressing. All you have to do is add the lettuce. The kit can be found in the refrigerated section and this is what it looks like...

I got a huge bowl out of the cupboard and put 3-4 huge hand fulls of lettuce into the bowl. Next I got my kitchen scissors out and cut the lettuce up into smaller pieces (I hate big pieces of lettuce). The bowl was actually pretty full of lettuce, but once I cut it all up, it looked smaller. LOL! Next I opened the kit and poured on the ranch dressing (I LOVE ranch dressing!). I added the cheese next, then the chicken, followed by bacon bits and topped it off with the croutons. I don't normally eat croutons in my salad, but what the heck! :) Those croutons were really really good and they give you quite a few of them! Very buttery and garlicy (is that a word?) LOL! I couldn't buy a box of them, I wouldn't be able to stay out of them. Here's what it looked like before I stirred it all up and made it look like a complete mess (just the way I like to eat stuff)....

Also at Walmart... I've been drinking the Sam's Choice Clear American Naturally Flavored Sparkling Water. It's 50 cents a bottle and each bottle is 1 Liter. If you look at the nutritional info, it has zeros all the way down the bottle. They've got some really good flavors too. There's Key Lime (my favorite), White Grape, Tropical Fruit, Wild Cherry, Raspberry, Mandarin Orange, Peach, Black Cherry and maybe another flavor but that's all I remember off of the top of my head. They help me get my water in each day (although technically I can only count half of it since the other half is supposed to be pure water). I figure every little bit helps though.

That's it for now. I'm still working on The Beck Diet Solution book. It's a little after 5PM now, so if I can get dinner made and finish up the last couple of hours of work that I need to do, I'll continue on with it and maybe come back and post about it tonight (no promises, but I'll try).

An Afternoon Spent Golfing

I hit my first "longer" golf course of the season today (not a total par 3 course like I went to last Friday). It was such a beautiful day for golf too, although my forearms got sunburned pretty bad. I have an official "golfer's tan". LOL! You know, where you can tell which hand the golfer wears the glove on according to the tan line above their wrist. :) Unfortunately for me, I have two of those because I wear a glove on both hands (I'm like Tommy Two Gloves from the Big Break on tv. LOL). Ah well. I'll try to add in some links to golf terms for those of you who don't golf and have no idea what I'm talking about (in case you want to know). :)

I did really really good today. I hit all of the balls straight, got out of the sand trap the two times I was in there, hit the middle of the green from the tee on a par 3 hole and made some awesome putts. I hit a few wormburners too. LOL! I'm still not hitting the ball very far, but I'm hitting it straight, and I'll take straight over far any day. I didn't have a perfect game by any means, but I did much better than I ever remember playing. I mostly made a bogey and a double bogey on most holes, and I had a couple of holes where I did a little worse. I had a 50 on the first 9 and a 51 on the back 9. I think I would have needed a 71 to make par. It's the closest to scoring 100 I've ever been. Normally my score looks more like 110-120. LOL! Even Rick kept saying "you're doing really good today" and he never says that. Usually I have to ask how I did and he's honest. LOL! I did hit a couple of really really REALLY bad shots though. On one hole I was teeing off and I topped the ball. I hit the wooden stake (more like a shortened telephone pole) right in front of my tee box and the ball came flying back at me. LOL! It was actually really funny once I got out of the way and got over the shock of it. Rick gives us a mulligan once per 9 holes. When the ball came flying back at me I said "I'll use my mulligan now". Hehehe! On another hole I had to hit across water (you have to understand... it doesn't matter if it's a lake, a creek or a puddle, my ball always goes in the water no matter what). Well, I laid up to the water because I knew I couldn't hit over it from the distance I was at. I hit the ball and guess what? I didn't get that ball up in the air either. LOL! That little pink ball (one of my good expensive balls I might add) skipped across the entire length of the water and then disappeared at the edge. If only it had skipped just 1 more time... but it didn't. :( Normally In that situation I'd exchange my good ball for a "water" ball (that would be a ball I know I'll never see again and I didn't pay much for). But I was feeling confident today since I had been playing so well. Should have known better.

Here's a picture of the par 3 hole where I got it in the middle of the green. See the little white flag down over the left edge of the water? That's about where I was aiming for.

And here's a picture of one of the areas where I ended up in a sand trap

I was starting to get really tired by the 15th hole and thought about just sitting the rest of the game out because I was in a lot of pain. My knee has been hurting off and on lately. It just depends on how much walking on it I do. I did a lot of walking out on that course today and my knee let me know so. After we finished up and I drove home, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get out of the car and walk inside or not. I sat in bed for awhile and propped it up on a pillow with an ice pack, but it still hurts. I can't wait to see what tomorrow is like. Hopefully I'll be able to get out of bed. If you don't hear from me.... I'm stuck in bed. LOL!!!!

Sorry, I know I said I was going to start talking about The Beck Diet Solution tonight, but I've only gotten 20 pages read so far (one of the things I did while I had my leg propped up earlier). Once I got online tonight, I spent a lot of time answering emails and making my way through the messages at my message board. When I do write about what I've read in the book, I want to make sure I have time to really go through it and post the good stuff. Maybe I can get an early start on my blog tomorrow afternoon and get some reading and writing done before I get too tired. It's almost 2:30 AM now, so I'm heading for bed. TTYL!

Busy As A Bee

Well I got a lot done today. I got up, answered quite a few emails (I'm still behind on email), and worked on the progress chart for my message board since Sunday starts a new week. After that, I set up a spot outside to take pictures of all of the golf clubs Rick wants to sell on Ebay next weekend (take a guess at who will actually be doing that part too) LOL! That took a little while to do because he has so many clubs. It seems all he does is buy new ones. He thinks a new club is going to improve his game. I keep telling him to take the money he would normally spend on clubs and go get some lessons from a PGA teacher. But, hey, don't listen to me, what do I know? LOL!

After I got his pictures done, I hopped back on the computer for another 4 hours and worked on trying to get the shops finished up for my t-shirts so I can add them to my site finally. It seems like I've been working on these forever. I only have 2 left, so I should be able to finish it up the next time I can work on it. Keeping my fingers crossed anyway. :)

We went to my parent's house for dinner and cards tonight. We usually go on Friday nights, but Rick played golf that day and hadn't been to bed yet (he works 3rd shift). We'll be going on Sunday next week too because Rick has to get up for a golf scramble really early on Saturday morning and he wants to get some rest.

Ok, I'm going to go add a picture to the "Circle of Friends" at my message board and update a couple of charts, then I'm going to head to bed and start reading The Beck Diet Solution. Hopefully I'll be able to start writing about it tomorrow night. I started reading the intro to the book yesterday, but got distracted, so I'm going to start over again. TTYL!

What's For Dinner?

I don't normally photograph my dinner plate (I usually just take pictures of new recipes I've made), but I wanted to share my dinner with you tonight (ok, honestly I've seen other people do it in their blog and I thought it was neat). LOL!

My dinner was super easy, but tasted really good. I just took a small package of chicken breasts and cut them in half, peeled and cut up a couple of potatoes, sprinkled about 3/4 of a packet of hickory bbq flavored chicken wing seasoning over both sides of the chicken and some over the potatoes and then baked it. Nothing special, but oh so good. We had canned green beans sprayed with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray and seasoned with some pepper along with it (we also had a salad, but I didn't take a picture of that since we all know what a bowl of lettuce with nothing special on it looks like). Here's a picture of my plate...

I didn't end up going to bed until around 4:00 this morning. I was getting ready to head to bed about an hour before that, but Ben IM'd me. I was quite surprised to see that he was still awake, but I was glad that I got to talk to him because I hadn't talked to him all day. When I did finally get to sleep, I had all sorts of strange dreams. All I remember from one of my dreams is some kind of natural disaster was going on and I was trying to lead people to safety. I remember waking up around 8:00 feeling like I had just watched a movie. LOL! I went back to sleep for another couple of hours and then Rick's phone woke me up. I was in the middle of another dream. I don't remember what it was about now, but I do remember telling Rick "man I was in the middle of a good dream and now I won't know how it ends". LOL!!!! I decided that was enough dreaming for 1 day and decided to get up. :)

After I showered and dressed, I went to the post office and dropped my orders off, went to the bank, and then drove to Rick's bank so he could deposit a check. We grabbed something to eat on the way home. After we ate, I asked Rick what he wanted to do for the day. He suggested we could go see a movie or we could go hit some golf balls. I figured I do enough sitting during the week, so we went and hit golf balls. The timing worked out pretty good because it started to rain about 5 minutes before we were done (yep, I hit golf balls in the rain. A little water won't kill me, but some lightning might. LOL!) We stopped of at our Super Walmart on the way home to fill up our water jugs and picked up a few things. That was pretty much my day. So what did you have for dinner? Care to share??? :) TTYL!

A NIce Day For A Walk

Sorry about not blogging the past couple of days. I've been really busy. It's actually 2 AM now and I should be heading to bed, but I didn't want to skip my blog again tonight.

I did manage to have a little bit of fun yesterday for a couple of hours. I went golfing for the first time this year. I know, I've been saying I was going golfing at least once a week for the past month now. LOL! Well, I finally went. I didn't do too bad considering it was my first time out for the year. I only went to a par 3 course (it had like 2 par 4's on it). I had a bogey on most of the holes and a double bogey on 1 hole, but I did have a handful of pars, so I was happy. :) The best thing was that I kept hitting the ball straight. When I first started playing golf (summer before last) I hit the ball straight then too, but last year I started doing something funky and everything started going left. Hopefully I'll be able to keep hitting the ball straight for the rest of this year. LOL!

This morning I got up at 7:00 and drove to Dayton to get my oil changed and my tires rotated at Toyota. From there I went to my dentist appointment (no cavities, woohoo!). After that I stopped over at my parents house and had lunch with them. It was a really nice day, so I asked my mom if she wanted to go for a walk. She agreed, so we stuck the leash on my dog Riley and brought him along. The place we went to walk has a track that's 1.3 miles around. We walked around once plus started around a 2nd time, but my knee was hurting so we cut up the middle and headed home. It's the furthest I've walked at once since I gained all of my weight back. Normally the most I can do is about 1/2 a mile. I did have to stop and sit for a minute along the way (they have benches every so often along the way), but I kept going. We must have worn poor little Riley out on the walk. LOL! My mom drove, so I sat in the back seat with Riley and held him up so he could feel the wind (he loves going for rides, but when he's in my car, he's in a carrier, so he doesn't get a lot of wind). Eventually he sat next to me on the seat. Next thing I knew he was laying down with his legs in the air going to sleep. It was extremely funny!

When we got back to my parent's house, my mom made us a crystal light smoothie in her magic bullet (1 cup ice, 1 cup water, 1 single serving packet of crystal light, and she added a packet of Splenda and a tablespoon of vanilla yogurt). It was good. :) She also picked up a copy of "The Beck Diet Solution" for me. She was going to just let me borrow her copy, but she's only on day #3 out of 40 and I didn't want to wait that long. LOL! I might take it day by day and post about it here on my blog.

Once I got home from my parents, I worked on getting orders out for the week, ate dinner and worked some more. I actually just finished working about 30 minutes ago, so I'm pretty tired. I was a little under points today, but that's fine because I used some of my flex points a few nights ago and I don't really want to use flex points. I figure it all evens out somewhere. LOL! Ok, I'm off to bed. TTYL! Hope you have a great weekend!

Another Long Day

Sorry everyone. It's been a really long day. I'm heading to bed to watch American Idol and then get some much needed ZZZZ's (hopefully I will). I'll talk to you tomorrow. :)

By the way, I lost .6 at my weigh in this morning. It's not what I was hoping for, but I'm not complaining. Any loss is a good loss.

Crazy Driver

I was on my way home from Procter & Gamble this afternoon when this blue truck came flying up behind me on the highway. I saw him coming in my rear view mirror, but he was going too fast for me to make a lane change because I figured he was going to go around me anyway. I was right. He got right up on my butt, went around me, then no sooner had he barely cleared my car, he cut in front of me (I may not be psychic, but I knew he was going to do this). I could have gotten mad about it (which I'm sure is why he did it), but instead, I decided to clap for him (hey I thought perhaps he was trying to be entertaining). He must not like applause because he flipped me the bird. I could have flipped him the bird back, but instead I just laughed at him. From there I kept my distance and just watched him go from lane to lane doing the same thing he did to me to everyone else in all 3 lanes. Luckily he got off the highway at the next exit. What an idiot! Now I know clapping and laughing at him wasn't the smartest thing, but I know he was looking for a rise and I wasn't going to give it to him. Other people were honking at him and flipping him off, so I'm sure he got enough rise out of them.

The testing at Procter & Gamble was the same today as it was yesterday. Same questions wanting to know if the two shower gels I tried made me feel sexy or not. LOL! I didn't like the two gels I tried today at all. They didn't smell good. One of them was Suave Professionals and I can't remember what the other one was, but it was some kind of cucumber scent. The cucumber one was better than the suave, but neither of them equaled up to the Olay Ribbons shower gel I tried yesterday. I got to talking to another woman today about the survey's. She said she had just finished doing another study for some kind of face cream. It was a 10 week study and she made $800 putting a cream on half of her face and going in twice a week to have them shine a blue light on her face for 7 minutes. I was like "you've got to be kidding". I asked her if she noticed any difference from the cream or anything and she said none at all. I can't believe companies will pay people to put cream on their face and shower gel on their arms. Amazing. Hey, I figure if they want to give me their money, I can always use more money. LOL! I'm going to call tomorrow or Thursday and see what other studies they have coming up. As long as they don't sound too crazy I'll sign up. :)

Well, tomorrow is weigh day so I'm heading for bed. My scale said I was down 3 pounds this morning, so we'll see what the scale says tomorrow. Wish me luck. :) TTYL!