Friday, March 27, 2009

Time to Get Serious!

I've never been one to gain weight. I've fluctuated in weight quite a lot, due to pregnancies and nursing and things, but I don't recall ever gaining weight outside of pregnancy. Last December, my sister sent out a family email about doing Body for Life so that we don't gain weight over the holidays. I was thinking "??".

I've gone all winter wearing the same pants - no apparent change through Thanksgiving or Christmas. But now, suddenly within the last month, my pants are fitting quite differently! Two months ago, everything was loose and I figured I'd have to go down a size soon. Now everything is tight.

So I guess this means it's time to actually start exercising instead of thinking about it. Last summer I decided I was going to become a runner. So I started walking/jogging. I completed 9 weeks of a couch to 5K program, which got me going from 1 minute jogging at a time during the first week to 30 straight minutes of jogging by the end. I did not make it to 5K distance because I have to run VERY SLOW to be able to go for 30 minutes. I could walk faster -- literally. I abandoned that effort in October and haven't done anything since. I rented a TaeBo video from Netflix in November and didn't touch it until last Friday.

I guess there could be one other option, but I don't think it's very likely. I thought my husband was kind of ambivalent about having more kids right at the moment, but apparently he's not ambivalent, because when I told him about my pants issue he got all excited and asked if I had been feeling sick and was waggling his eyebrows a lot :-P

I did start a fitness blog last summer, but I never wrote anything in it. I'll try to flesh it out a little and then maybe share the link. Then I can quit writing in it again, just like my Beans & Rice blog.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Brownies

The other night after the kids went to bed, I needed a treat. So I made brownie batter, without the eggs. (I will eat raw eggs, but only fresh ones from a trusted local farm. I didn't want to be eating raw eggs that had been sitting in brownie batter for several days.) I added a little extra water to compensate for the egginess. But it was late and I measured wrong, so then I had to add flour. It was still pretty thin. I put it in the fridge and the kids and husband never discovered it. I've had a delicious brownie batter treat every night since then!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Very Troubled

So I've been listening to a great song lately:
(warning: none of the songs below are appropriate for Molly Mormons, including myself)



Don't they have the greatest hair? The song came out in 1993, so I guess this is mid-90's former-glam-metal hair.

What troubles me is this --
What on earth does "With an ironclad fist I wake up and French kiss the morning" mean??

How about "This hotel bar hangover whiskey's gone dry"? That's part of the bridge, which strangely enough does not show up in that music video above. Weird.

Apparently, other people have been baffled by the lyrics too, because in this 2003 version, he changes both of them:
"With an ironclad fist, I wake up and French kiss each morning" (Still don't know what an ironclad fist is)
"The hotel bar hangover whiskey ran dry" (makes marginally more sense)



Bon Jovi is one of the acts I would love to see in concert. I remember my first encounter with Bon Jovi songs. In 1986, the Monkees were popular, as it was their 20th anniversary concert tour. They also had a few new songs that year. I was 5 years old and LOVED the Monkees. I desperately wanted to go to their concert, but it was way too much money for the whole family to go to, and I was only FIVE, so it wasn't like I could just hop on down there myself. I would watch MTV all the time, waiting to catch a Monkees song. I have no idea how my mom was OK with this. I remember hearing Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer and thinking that it must be a good song because it was about praying.

If you thought that 90's hair was good, check this out:



I really hope 80's glam metal hair comes back (but for women), because my hair totally looks like that when I wake up in the morning.

The other 80's metal group I love is Def Leppard.

My favorite is probably Pour Some Sugar On Me:


My freshman roommates always used to listen to Love Bites, particularly when love wasn't going so well for one of them:


Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad is probably my favorite Def Leppard ballad:


Other than the brief encounter with Living on a Prayer in 1986, the real reason I got into Bon Jovi and Def Leppard is that I had a boyfriend who liked them. Around 1995, he made me a mix tape with several Bon Jovi and Def Leppard songs on it. (Surely if you had a boyfriend in the 80s or 90s, he made you a mix tape too.) I've liked some of their songs ever since. My husband was a teenager in the 80s, so naturally he LOVES Bon Jovi and Def Leppard. He used to own all their CDs, but after we got married, we decided to throw out all our secular music. Bye-bye Bon Jovi and Def Leppard. Fortunately we now have subscriptions to Rhapsody music service, so we can listen to Bon Jovi all the time. Rhapsody used to have all of Def Leppard's music, but they removed it. Sad.

I could totally rock Karaoke night if I got to sing Bon Jovi or Def Leppard. Sometimes I listen to Bon Jovi to keep myself energized at work (if I'm doing something that doesn't require much concentration), and I have to really watch it so I don't bust out singing at the top of my lungs. It's great to do at home though!

~~~~~

Unrelated question - for those of you using feed readers, do my posts come through several times each? My typical writing method is to write the post, go through it several times, then post it. Then I find more things to change, probably 2 or 3 times, requiring several re-publishes. Do all the versions show up in your feed readers?

Friday, March 06, 2009

Going to the Symphony?

When I was a youngling, I went to the symphony a few times. I have always liked cultural events, like the symphony, opera, ballet, etc. When we lived in Houston, they had a family series at the symphony, and we went to that one season. Oh, look, I actually have a picture:

Peter and the Wolf

I have always wanted to go to more cultural events, and I'd been feeling a little sad that I haven't been to any recently. My husband is not interested, and my kids are still too young to go to full-length concerts. Over the past month, there were ads on the radio for the Utah Symphony's performance of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. I really wanted to go! I looked the tickets up to see how much they cost, thinking maybe I would just go alone, and I remembered the main reason I don't go to cultural events/concerts. It's a VERY EXPENSIVE NAP. Most tickets for one performance at the Utah Symphony range from $32 to $51, with a few $26 and $16 seats. There are so few $16 seats that it makes me wonder what is wrong with them. I mean, it's the symphony, so it's not like you need to see, but maybe the seats are at the perfectly wrong spot acoustically, so you can't hear anything.

Anyway, I remembered that for me, cultural events nearly always turn into a nap. As I've mentioned, I've slept through the Phantom of the Opera at least twice. (I can't remember if I fell asleep when I went to see it the third time in Houston.) I have slept through Cats on Broadway in New York City. I am pretty sure I've slept through every other cultural event I've ever been to.

Now that I've remembered my tendency to nap, I'm not so concerned about going. I am, however, very grateful to my subscription to Rhapsody. I pay $13/month and can listen to almost anything. So I downloaded Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto. It fits perfectly into my playlist, right after 'Africa' by Toto, and right before 'Bed of Roses' by Bon Jovi. I also added the orchestral scores of all six Star Wars movies. It's fun to teach kids that orchestral music includes cool stuff like movie scores.

Oh, and best of all -- when I was looking up those ticket prices, I found that the Utah Symphony DOES have a family series! I am almost sure I looked this up when we moved back to Utah in 2006 and they did not have it then (or I am a bad Googler). The next concert is the Cowboy Jamboree. We are planning to go.