Weekly Round Up: Low Key

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  What a difference a week makes.  Last weekend we were on the road - Boy Scout camp for the guys and all over the midwest for me - and this weekend was a quiet weekend at home.

The big reason for the low key weekend is that the hubs had LASIK on Friday!  Everything went well, but in the few days after LASIK all you can really do is sit around on the couch (a.k.a. do nothing that has even the remotest chance of damaging your eyes) so that's what we did.  Eight hours after the surgery when we took the dog for a walk, he said "I can read the word 'stop' on the stop sign at the end of the street" (a quarter of a mile away).  I had LASIK way back in the early days, and while yes it was the scariest 10 minutes of my life and yes I have dry eye syndrome (I had it right after the surgery, had 10 years of no problems whatsoever, and then dry eye came back to stay...between you and me I think it's an allergy totally unrelated to LASIK but every doctor that I've ever talked to just says "yeah you had LASIK and you're female, of course you have dry eye" so I've given up on asking and just use eye drops like they're going out of style) but it was still one of the best things that I've ever done.

To prepare, I made a big batch of chocolate chip cookies, which is a favorite family treat but between you and me I can take them or leave them.  And then I thought, "hey it's about time that I had a treat, imma make something that I wanna eat" so I made up another batch of WHITE chocolate chip cookies.  I baked up a few to eat and froze the rest of the dough.  Next time maybe I'll get crazy and make WHITE CHOCOLATE CHIP MACADAMIA cookies.  Along with a batch of plain Jane chocolate chip for everyone else, of course.

The next craving that I had was for steak fajitas, so I channeled that energy toward our Sunday dinner:

• Chipotle steak (copycat).  If you get nothing else out of this post or this blog==>this recipe is a keeper and you'll be seeing it again.  I only made two pounds of steak instead of four, and next time I will grill the steak instead of doing it on the stove in a cast iron skillet (made the house super smokey).  I also want to shout out that this recipe includes instructions for making adobo sauce, which is something that Every.Single.Time I need it (A) I don't have it, or (B) I end up wasting the rest of a can of chipotles that I can't figure out what to do with after scooping out the sauce.  Basically it's just tomato paste with apple cider vinegar plus spices.
  
• Fajita veggies.  I baked up three bell peppers and an onion.
• Mexican rice.  The end result was fine but not spectacular, and the recipe was more trouble than it was worth.  The lack of a link to the recipe says it all, but it was good enough to pile all of the other yummies on top of.
  

I laid out all of the goods and everyone made their own style of fajitas - in tortillas for the fellas and at the last minute I decided that I wanted a bowl.

For lunches, I ate off my Papa Del's leftovers and was very sad when they were gone.

Workouts

On the Caroline Girvan front, I finished round 2 of Iron and I'll be heading for another round of the two week Beastmode program next.  From there the plan is to knock out more of the one week series, and then do Heat and Epic Endgame.  After that (we're talking about six months so it's not like if you blink you'll miss it) I might get the app and do the new Beastmode program...but we'll see.

On the cardio front, I've figured out that as much as I like my sprinting workout, doing it 3 times a week is a bit much.  My made up one minute run/one minute walk combo is feeling like a slog as well.  I went in search of beginning runner's programs and tried out one session of the Hal Higdon 30-30 workout (30 minutes total = 10 minutes brisk walking, 15 minutes alternating 30 seconds run/30 seconds walk, 5 minutes walking cool down).  That feels like more of my jam.  I'll do that for a bit with 1-2 days of sprinting per week for a bit and then see how I feel about running for more than 30 seconds at a time.  Our treadmill should get fixed next week, hopefully for good this time, so plan B is to just forget the whole thing and go back to treadmill power walking.  I will keep you posted.

Watching

With the hubs: we started watching a show that's been on our radar for a while.  If you like 90's one season wonders and you like Bruce Campbell, then The Adventures of Brisco County Jr is the show for you!

 

On my own: I did from the couch what I did IRL last weekend and watched a bunch of FLW documentaries.  I saw one on the Bradley house and the Ken Burns documentary series. 

Reading

I surprised myself and ended up finishing The Switch.  

• What I liked: the characters were believable and relatable.  The main character has a panic attack and meltdown at work, which is pretty much where I am on any given day so of course that spoke to me.  It was a cute, pleasant book.
  
• What I didn't: I felt that there was too much fluff in the way of the story.  I ended up skimming page after page about all of the country social events that the granddaughter was setting up.
  

Currently: when two of your blogging buddies start talking about "a weird little book about incest" you know it was only a matter of time before I picked up A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore.  From as far as I've gotten I can tell you that it's super moody and super gothic and I'm all about that.  Said blogging buddies are Jenny and Engie.

I was in the market for another audio book and I had an audible credit to use up.  There are a few audiobooks that I'm interested in, but nothing so hot that I can't wait for the library holds to come in.  What did I want to listen to badly enough to "pay" with a credit?  I vaguely remembered that Paula McClain had written a memoir, and sure enough it wasn't available at the library so I had my match.  Like Family is her memoir about growing up in the foster system.  I can tell that it's going to get rough, since most "I grew up in foster care being yanked from house to house" stories don't coexist with "and my childhood was wonderful" BUT she is such a good writer.  Listening to her words gives me the same feeling that I got from looking at hand carved woodwork in FLW houses...it's serious craftsmanship that puts me in awe.  

Note to self I've only read When the Stars Go Dark so start looking at her other books ASAP.

That's all I got for this week!  Who else has had LASIK?  Who's got dry eye?  Anyone got a good Mexican rice recipe to recommend?  How's that for a random list of questions?