Posted on February 20, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Tis the wind, and nothing more…

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.’

I would like to take this time to thank Edgar Allen Poe for writing “The Raven.” Awesome poem, and highly quotable in any number of situations. Like when someone keeps shooting a nail gun outside your apartment…

I took Heath for a walk around the lake this afternoon. We left just as the nail gun guys were finishing up with my steps and got back as they were working on the steps on the opposite end of the building (there’s a third set of steps in the middle). We were gone a long time given that we only walked about 2.5 miles, because somedog wanted to sniff everything. But that was okay, I wasn’t in a hurry. I did tell some crazy old lady who was letting a Chinese crested in a sweater run around on the the trail off leash that she should put her dog on a leash, because it came running over to me and Heath and got me tangled up in dog, and because I’ve had issues recently with aggressive dogs, leashed or not, attempting to attack me and/or Heath. Crazy old lady just laughed and said her dog wanted to play, which is the exact same thing she said before I told her to leash her dog while I was glaring at her.

And then another crazy lady who had passed me earlier and made a comment about by dog, who was relieving himself at the time, came by again and told my dog how precious he was and that she was glad he was here, and then told me that all dogs wanted to do was make our lives better and that she was glad I was out with my dog, and that she could tell I’m a kind person. H’okay…

I’m always seeing this one lady out on the trail who carries a plastic bag filled with something and walks very, very fast. I’ve always wondered what she carries around in that bag, and I finally found out today when she saw a goose on the trail and stopped–it’s a bag full of pieces of bread to feed the birds! You have no idea how long I’ve been puzzled by this lady and her bag. I’m glad the mystery has been solved.

When I got back to my apartment, it was time to cook dinner. I decided to go with stir-fry. But not the stir-fry I normally make, which is just beef, onions, and peppers. I had a bag of tri-color peppers in my hand at Trader Joe’s, but then I saw the convenience packages of Asian stir-fry veggies that they have and realized that it would only be a little more expensive (and a lot more fun) to buy that instead.

As you can see, lots of tasty veggies were involved! And they were nice and fresh, too.

I stir-fried them with some stew beef I got from Whole Foods, a little olive oil, and some lemon-garlic seasoning.

Unfortunately, in the time it took for me to cook dinner, the sun set and I lost the light. I had to resort to the old balance-my-plate-on-the-TV-and-use-the-light-from-the-lamp trick to take pictures of the tastiness.

Some of the meat was tougher than I would’ve liked, but the veggies were awesome. I actually just finished off the leftovers, which I probably shouldn’t have done–that was my third meal of the day, but there was almost a pound of beef in the stir-fry and it can’t be good to eat all of that…

As a post-dinner snack, I had a  quarter-cup (or 40 grams) of dark-chocolate covered almonds. These are my sweet treat for the next little while and have been placed in the highest part of my pantry, which has a separate door, so that I don’t see them (and therefore eat them) every time I open the main pantry.

I bought a container of these to take on our family trip to Myrtle Beach last year and everyone who tried them enjoyed them. They’re a little pricey–either $6 or $7 for 24 oz–but they’re crazy good, and they’re rich enough that I can’t eat a lot of them in one sitting (although I did have a few more just now while writing this…).

A little while later, I had an apple crumble Liberte yogurt.

I had bought nine Liberte yogurts at Whole Foods today. I’d buy more but people look at me askew for buying as many as I do now. Although why do I care if they look at me funny? It’s good yogurt; I’ll totally drop $11+ on it every time I go to Whole Foods. Plus, I have no problem going to Trader Joe’s and buying $15 worth of Pure bars.

After the yogurt, I busted out Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred for the first time in a while and did Level 1. It’s still definitely a challenge for me to get through the entire workout, and I’m sure that my abs will hate me in the morning, but it was a lot easier than the first time I did the DVD last year! w00t for progress. As a side note, I’ve found that now that I have a feel for the DVD and what exercise is coming next, the workout goes much faster if I mute the TV and play music instead. It’s a quick workout anyway (people say it’s 20 minutes, but by the time you do the warm-up and cool-down it’s a bit longer), but it’s more fun to listen to Cartel and Flickerstick while you’re doing it than hearing Jillian Michaels say the same thing she’s said the lazy bajillion times you’ve done the DVD.

Not too long after I finished the Shred for the day, I hopped on my recumbent bike and did an easy 30 minutes while reading blogs.

What’s with the sudden increase in exercise, you ask? Well, a co-worker gave me the idea this week to fill out a “chore chart” with various fitness goals for the week. The days of the week are listed on the chart along with spaces for eight goals, and I have stickers to put on the chart when I complete a goal. If I get a certain number of stickers each week, I’m going to put $25 in a savings account so I can buy a Garmin Forerunner 205 in six weeks’ time.

Is this somewhat juvenile? Yes. Does it make me excited and motivated? Yes. It does. I have the chart taped to the back of my front door and it’s already got several stickers on it (I started yesterday), and I have a list of several more goals I’d like to add to the chart in future weeks once some of the present ones become habit.

I made up three categories–Exercise, Nutrition/Food, and Mental Health–and thought up some goals for each of them. Then I designated four spaces on the chart for exercise goals, three for nutrition/food, and one for mental health. These are my goals for this week and the rationale behind them:

1. Exercise: Jog for 30+ minutes a day three days a week. Well, this one’s a little obvious–I want to keep my running fitness up, and to do that I have to run consistently. I’ll be starting on One Hour Runner (skipping to Week 3) tomorrow, so I’ve got a program in place–just need to follow it. This will be a challenge because I hate running on the treadmill, so I’ve got to focus on sticking to my schedule at work so I can make it home in time to run before I lose the sunlight.

2. Exercise: Do Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred three days a week. This is a great exercise DVD for getting some muscle tone and building general endurance/strength, so I’ve decided to alternate this with jogging for a while. The challenge here is getting myself motivated to do the DVD, and also finding appropriate times to do it–I was able to do it at around 9PM this evening because my downstairs neighbor was gone, but that’s not always going to be the case.

3. Exercise: Walk during my lunch break at work three days a week. For a while I was walking every day during lunch, but then the cold got to me and I stopped completely. It’s a good thing to do because it gives me the opportunity to physically get away from work, listen to some music, and work out some of my mid-day nervous energy. I’m going to try for three days week for a while and see how that goes. Day like today I wouldn’t have though twice about heading out for a walk during lunch, but it’s a challenge for me to get motivated when it’s cold outside, or when I forgot to take my walking shoes back to work (like I have for the past week!).

4. Exercise: Use my recumbent bike for 30+ minutes a day five days a week. I’ve gotten lax about this recently–it used to be I wouldn’t let myself watch TV or a movie in my living room unless I was on the bike and pedaling. I would pedal through all two hours of The Biggest Loser! Somewhere along the way I got lazy about it. So I’m going to try to ride my recumbent bike for at least 30 minutes five days a week while watching TV or reading.

5. Nutrition: Prepare and pack a healthy lunch three evenings a week, to be enjoyed at work the next day. Lack of preparation leads to me scrambling to make lunch in the morning before I leave work. Sometimes I won’t bring lunch at all, and then I end up eating peanut M&Ms for lunch. That’s not good. So at least three evenings a week, I want to make time to prepare something healthy for the next day’s lunch and pack it up, so all I have to do is grab it and go in the morning.

6. Nutrition: Count calories until 3 PM for five days a week. I mentioned this goal to a couple of people and said it was because I tend not to eat enough unless I do this, and they were all, “Say what?” It’s true, though–I really need to work on front-loading my calories. As it is now, I tend not to eat enough in the early part of the day to keep me going throughout the afternoon, so I end up going for candy and other high-calorie foods late in the day and overdoing it. Only counting until 3PM will get me through breakfast, lunch, and two snacks, and should help me get an idea of whether I’m on track for the day and allow me to self-correct and eat more if I’m coming up short.

7. Nutrition: Have four wheat-free days a week. I’m still not ready to do my two-week test run where I give up wheat completely, but I’m going to shoot for four wheat-free days a week for now. Doing so will help me to transition to eating less wheat so that I’m not going cold turkey once I do decide to go off it, and it’ll also give me the flexibility to have a cookie once in a while. [The reason I'd like to give up wheat completely for a couple of weeks is primarly to see whether it helps my eczema, but also because of some interesting things I've read lately about how many of the calories we consume come from wheat-based products--seems like cutting down on wheat would maybe help me eat better.]

8. Mental: Get up the first time my alarm goes off three days a week. I’m very bad about this, and it leads to a vicious cycle where I turn off my alarm and sleep more, then get up and rush to get ready for work, arrive at work later than I’d like, don’t get home until 6:30PM, then have little time to do anything but make dinner before I go back to bed and do it all again. Yes, I have chronic insomnia, but my constantly shifting wake-up time isn’t doing anything to help that.

Wow, this was a long post and it’s crazy late…better get to bed so I can get up in the morning and continue with the giant apartment-cleaning project I started a couple weekends ago.

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming…