Weekly Round Up: Goal Digger

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition we had a very random dinner, I found something to keep me busy on the fitness front, I've got a new book to talk about, and no one is saying that I'm a goal digger but...I've got a few things to share on that front.

Eats

Our meals are ever zanier and less organized than usual thanks to our exciting winter break plans.  And when I say exciting, I mean that this week the boys got their wisdom teeth out.

The boys' temporary new diet consists of: mini quiches, yogurt, a variety of soups, and lots of ice cream.  I made a cheese and egg only version of the quiches, which is: 4 eggs, 2 cups of milk, a bit more than 2 tablespoons of flour, and enough cheese to fill 12 muffin cups.  I made the first batch of quiche on Friday morning while the boys were at the oral surgeon, and the second batch that night.

On the first night the adults wanted something random for dinner and Hubs suggested French toast and some of the quiches.  I seconded his motion.

Workouts

At the beginning of the week I was all off kilter from Christmas and felt very tired.  I decided to roll with it and (gulp!) GET SOME EXTRA SLEEP AND SKIP A FEW DAYS OF WORKOUTS.  When I was ready to get back into action again, I knocked back a few random Caroline Girvan workouts and put in some more 3-12-30 treadmill sessions (that's 3 MPH/12% incline/30 minutes).

In the meantime, I heard about a six month hiking challenge near home and decided to sign up since I want to learn more about local hiking trails, and what better way to do that than a planned hiking challenge.  It's about 100 miles total and 20-some hikes ranging from 3 to 7 miles.  If I do one hike a week I'll finish in early June, with the caveat that there will be weeks when I can't hike due to weather and travel.  I'm banking as many hikes as I can now and as we get closer to spring and there's more light I can add in some weekday hikes to catch up if I need to.  I did the first hike today and it was muddier than I was banking on but still there was something exhilarating about it.  I've never been that in to distance walking, but now that I've started I'm kind of digging it.  I'll keep you posted.

Watching

We felt that we had room for one more Christmas movie, so we saw Christmas Vacation.  This is a movie that I came to later in life and I believe this is only my second time seeing it.  It's a lil' tedious in spots but they really nail Dad Christmas which makes it all worth while.

That set off a hankering to see the original Vacation.  This is on the list of movies that I was too young to see back in the day but I saw anyway because my parents saw them.  Other titles that come to mind from the list are: Fletch, Risky Business, Purple Rain, and Desperately Seeking Susan.  Anyway, Vacation has always had a special place in my heart since we took a lot of cross country trips to see grandparents when I was a young 'un.  I'm not sure if I'd ever be down to drive that far as an adult, and we've certainly never taken the boys anything further away than 12 hours, but I sure have the memories.

Reading

You would think that I wouldn't have anything left to say about books after the big year end summary but that's where you would be wrong.

• I've almost finished The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike's Elite Running Team by Kara Goucher.  I didn't know anything about her going in besides that she is very anti-doping and well, yep she definitely has a reason.  She broke record after record and had an amazing running career, but under an absolute *$%##** of a coach.  The biggest thing that I'm wondering is how great her career would have been without all of the abuse and being left to feel like a failure for coming in third for so many legendary races.  Comparing her story to Des Linden's Choosing to Run is mind boggling.  Any time that Des had so much as a sniffle she got to go off to an army of medical experts while Kara was told to buck up and run with stress fractures.
• Out of nowhere I found a new mystery series.  I was intrigued when Jess wrote about reading Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo in one day, so I checked it out on Libby.  It's a murder mystery series set in Amish country.  Well whomp whomp it wasn't available in Kindle format so I started reading it on my phone.  It started out with a very graphic murder scene that had me skimming very quickly (let me refer you again to Modern Mrs. Darcy's very excellent You Don't Want to Go There), so at first I thought this was going to be a DNF but something made me keep paging through the first few chapters on my phone.  I decided then and there that I had to have it, but not badly enough to buy it.  Normally I'd just put in a request at the library and pick it up in a few days, but in this case I was motivated to not only go to the library but march up to the shelves and get it for myself.  While I was there I decided that it was a waste of my time to just get the first book so I got the second book in the series as well.  Anyhoo, I've had to skim a few more passages that cross my You Don't Want to Go There line but this book is so good that I STAYED AWAKE UNTIL MIDNIGHT ON NEW YEAR'S EVE reading it so if that's not an endorsement I don't know what is.

I'm not sure what my reading looks like from here.  I want to reread a bunch of stuff, I want to keep working on the Alphabet series (but how frequently - every other book?  one a month?), I think there are about 16 books in this new series, and of course there are going to be a lot of new books coming along.  All I can tell you is whatever book that I start next will be the book that I start next.

2024 Goalz

It's been a long time since I've had a formal goals list, specifically not since 2018.  I did have goals for 2019-2021 but they were all running related, so kind of much of a muchness, and 2022-23 was pretty much an "every day ends in y" stint.  Now I've got enough spunk back to tackle some stuff.  Here is my rambling, somewhat random list:

• Physical and mental health:
• There's no getting around it, I do want to lose weight.  My goal is to lose 1# a month in 2024.  If you're asking why I picked such a low number, it's because I want to hit the goal, and also live my life while doing it.  At the age of 48 and with everything else that I've got going on, weight loss is just not going to be the main focus of my life like it was in my younger/single days and that's a good thing.  Also my ultimate loss goal is 15-20 pounds so knocking out 12 pounds is the bulk of it.  I don't think I'm going to blog very much about this since there's nothing really more about it that I can say, but TBD.
  
• Find joy in spite of not liking my job and being uncertain about a laundry list of "not for the blog" stuff.   When I did the Week in the Life series, I found that writing about my mundane days actually made me feel better about them, so I'm going to continue this off line.  I'm experimenting with a short form journal.  This could also involve more therapy down the line.
• Keep doing pushups!  I've been solidly doing 30+ pushups 3/x week for the last three months.
• Add in pull up stuff.  My January goal is ONLY to hang on the bar for 3x10 seconds TWICE a week.  I've done things like this in the past but too much so I ended up burning out.  If you're sensing a theme with my goals, I'm very much aiming for a minimum.  At the end of January I will reassess what to do from there.
• Travel
• Continue to go places!  I'm balancing how many places I want to go with how much I want to be away from the fam (lots of places but not a lot of time away from fam so that's the conflict and when we get another dog I'll probably want to be at home more as well), but at a minimum I plan to not be at home when they're away at Boy Scouts and to possibly take some mini-digital-nomad trips.
• Related goal that's a BIG DEAL==>MEET SOME OF THE COOL BLOGGERS IRL.  In the past I've always had strict separation between my "blog" life and my "IRL" life, but it's come to my attention that Cool Bloggers do meet IRL and it sounds like they're having a blast plus there is the sweetener that at lot of you live close to places where I want to travel.  I'll be reaching out to folks as I get a better idea of my 2024 travel schedule.
• Food
• Cook a total of 10 new recipes for the fam in 2024.  Why such a low number?  It's due to the small number of "new" recipes that fit the clashing taste buds and the time crunch that we have around dinner time.  If I hit this goal I will be thrilled.
• Cook at total of 20 new recipes for ME in 2024.  Sheesh, I've been craving Indian food for YEARS and I just never get around to making it.
• Totally Random
  
• Send out proper Holiday cards with a collage of family photos.  Every year for the past many years the Hubs and I have been thinking about this and every year for the past many years we have not done it.  It's not for a lack of taking fascinating family photos, I'll tell you that much.  The action steps are: continue to take a bunch of pictures, assemble the collage on Oct 1, and then get them sent out and back to us by Thanksgiving and ready to drop in the mail.
• Take a picture of a Bald Eagle.  They are becoming more common where I live so it's just a matter of researching where I'm likely to see them and hanging out with the good camera.

That's all I've got!  What do you want to do in 2024?