Wednesday Ramblings

On a cheerier note, here's some rambling about other things that are going on...

Paleo eating is going pretty well.  Lunch and dinner are super easy.  Lunch typically consists of a salad with some sort of meat.  I either bring my own or I can very easily do a paleo salad from the office cafe's salad bar.  Dinner is also super easy.  We have a faux-Whole Foods grocery store here called Sprouts.  Its like WF but soooo much cheaper and easier to navigate.  They have all sorts of chicken sausage varieties (brats, southwest, apple, basil) for $2.99/lb and they don't contain any funky filler ingredients.  WIN.  I've also found that their yams (the skin on these guys is almost red) when sliced, coated with olive oil, seasoned with red hawaiian salt, and roasted are to die for.  Really, we could eat those things nearly every night.  So a basic dinner would be some sort of meat and some sort of veggie.  Pretty simple and easy.  Breakfast is a bit more of a challenge, mainly because I'm so dang picky about breakfast.  I was eating hard boiled eggs for a while, but they got tiresome really fast.  Then I made up some paleo pancakes and they were just ok.  This week I did omlette muffins and they're also just ok.  Dang gag reflex in the morning just makes things tricky.  Last week was a complete disaster in terms of paleo.  Something about driving across 4 states and me not really planning ahead for food made it a disaster.  And working my ass off in the house and not having time to actually cook.  I didn't really eat anything awful (lots of subway, although we got Wendy's on the way to Idaho and both of us felt sick after.  I think that says a lot about how healthy we've been eating and how shitty fast food really is).  But really, it was a bunch of bread and some stress dessert eating of really yummy homemade chocolate chip cookies.  But this week is a new week and I'm back on track.  I still don't know if paleo is life changing but I'll give it another month and see how things are.

My plan to ski every weekend really hasn't happened yet.  Mainly because the snow here has been shit.  The ski areas opened up around Halloween which is really early.  Things looked promising with a 20 inch base in October.  Then at Thanksgiving, the base was a whopping 21 inches.  And Christmas.... 25 inches.  The past week the mountains have been consistently getting 4-7 inches every few days, so I'm hoping that the rest of the season can be salvaged.  Still, we're doing better than Idaho.  Bogus Basin in Boise still hasn't opened.  Nothing but dead grass on the slopes.  Its sad.

Training (in a very vague sense of the term) is going ok.  The cycling I've been doing is going ok (when I do it - I seem to only get in 2 of the 3 workouts each week).  Lifting is very much the same story as cycling. Swimming is getting a bit better.  Still, I'm behind on fitness and getting ready for Boise in April will be interesting.  I've got a duathalon this weekend, so it will be an interesting test of my fitness level.  Its a weird one, though.  1.5 mile run, 3.6 mile bike, 2.5 mile run, 7.2 mile bike then a 100 yard dash to the finish.

Our kitties are really turning into great cats.  Zipper is hilarious and exactly what we needed.  She loves to attack drops of water on the shower glass doors as we shower.  She's also a very enthusiastic fetcher.  Ernie was a good fetcher, but it was on his terms and he wasn't very good about returning it to you.  Zip will fetch any time of the day (or night - she's brought her toys to bed) and she's really good about returning the toy within arm's reach.  She loves it so much that we'll often tire of the game before she does.  She's also a daredevil and lately, has taken to jumping on the railing at the top of our stairs, which forms a bit of a balcony with a ~20+ ft drop.  I saw her jump up there one night and it was not graceful.  I know she's managed to pivot 180 while on that thing.  Hopefully she won't fall, but if she does, there's not much I can do about it.  Gunny is slowly coming out of his shell.  He's very responsive to me and loves to be on my lap, kneeding and purring (although we call it dancing).  Lately, he's been jumping on Will's lap during the day, which is huge progress.  He's still really skittish and jumpy.  Hopefully he'll chill out in time.